


We'll Keep Running For Our Lives

by Basser



Series: Can't Rewind Verse [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Children, Depression, Drama, Florida, Gang Violence, Gen, Mystery, Smoking, Swearing, mentions of drug use, sherlock doggedly ignoring serious injuries, varied racial slurs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basser/pseuds/Basser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events of Can't Rewind Now, a wandering Sherlock finds himself in Florida. He soon discovers not all is as it seems in the lives of an elderly couple named Hudson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! So I've decided to do shorter chapters this time, and will be making an effort to avoid being quite so obsessive about keeping consistent wordcount. This should improve my dismal update speed. Speaking of, though, I'm also not going to apologise for delays. I may take a month to finish up the next part, or a week, or maybe I'll post in a day. It's all dependent on my motivation levels and work schedule. Have patience.
> 
> As always I would be thrilled to hear what you think! Good, bad, constructive or not - leaving a review is by far the best way to get me excited to write more. When no one comments on my work I tend to feel like I'm posting into the void and lose interest quickly.
> 
> But enough of me nattering. Hope you all enjoy the next leg of Sherlock's angst-ridden adventures!

**««**

It was far too bloody hot for this nonsense.

Sherlock scowled to himself as he crashed headlong into a thicket of damp shrubbery, nearly stumbling over the roots therein, and grabbed the thin trunk of some sort of fern-looking tree to swing himself round in the other direction. Here he was, quite possibly running for his _life_ , and all he could concentrate on was how disgustingly warm the weather was. Excellent focussing abilities, brain. Very helpful.

After a short pause to get his bearings he took off once more through the tangled leaves. Behind him he could clearly hear the sounds of his pursuers tearing through the foliage as well; to be honest this really hadn't been a well thought-out escape plan. In his defence, however, it did have the advantage of being in the fucking _shade_ , which was a stark improvement over his previous path across bare city pavement. Not that the lack of direct sunlight was providing much relief from the sweltering humidity... ugh, bloody horrendous swampland. Why in hell had he ever thought venturing this far south would be a good idea?

"Heeeeere, faggot! Here boy! Come on out, ya faggot-ass cracka!"

Another deep scowl - when had he even _hinted_ that he might be gay? Or were they simply using it as an all-purpose insult? Morons. Under more favourable circumstances he might have been tempted to stop short and treat them all to a lecture on proper heckling techniques whilst dodging blows. That would have to wait for a day when he wasn't feeling so perilously close to passing out with the heat, though. Also preferably when he wasn't being chased by a half dozen steroidal behemoths erroneously labelled members of the human species.

Displaying an uncanny knack for fucking him over his mind of course took that opportunity to focus on entirely the wrong aspect of his surroundings. Running through mud and scrub-brush under a canopy of unfamiliar leaves, the crash of a half dozen angry Americans behind him, and the one thing he found most interesting to look at was a goddamned abandoned tyre off to his right. What was it doing there? Twenty metres from the nearest roadway at _least_ , how on earth did a car tyre end up in the middle of a swamp thicket? Someone must have-

His frustratingly off-topic thoughts were cut short as, having not been watching his feet, he stepped squarely in a patch of slick mud and went sprawling arse over tea kettle into the dirt.

"Shit, nigga, white boy fuckin' caught his own damn self!"

A chorus of laughter above him signalled in no uncertain terms that Sherlock was about to have an extremely unpleasant experience. Likely one which would end in either death or permanent disfigurement. He took a moment to wonder what in hell's name had ever possessed him to bother with these idiots in the first place before reluctantly propping himself up on his elbows and lifting his head to regard his adversaries. Above him an over-muscled young black man had crouched down to Sherlock's undignified level; too-white teeth flashed between dark lips as the man grinned smugly down at his cornered prey.

"You gonna regret fuckin' with us, white boy."

Well he already did regret that quite a lot, to be honest, but Sherlock couldn't exactly voice such sentiments aloud. Instead he canted his head slightly to the side and raised an eyebrow in a condescending look.

"Perhaps if you didn't make yourself such an obvious target for ridicule you'd have escaped our little confrontation with your fragile ego intact."

The gang member barked out an amused laugh and turned toward one of his cronies standing at his side. "You fuckin' hear this shit? All a sudden fucker's talking like the goddamn Queen of England."

Sherlock glared as the two bulkiest of the group grabbed him by the biceps and hauled him to his feet. Their apparent ringleader took a step forward and smacked him not-quite-gently on the chest.

"You puttin' on a show for us now, cracka? Wanna go out sounding fancy?"

"I'm British. This is my natural accent," Sherlock explained in an irritated deadpan. Gratifying to know his attempts to mimic the American vernacular had apparently fooled a group of natives, but half-dead of heatstroke and about to have the piss kicked out of him he found this minor success really didn't cheer him in the slightest.

"Huh," the other man nodded slowly in understanding, faking a look of intrigue. Half a second later he dropped the false sagacity and grinned again. "I ain't never beat the shit out of a foreigner before."

"First time for everything, Jay!" one of his cohorts yelled.

"Damn straight!"

Next thing Sherlock knew he was bent double, an wave of acute pain spreading flashfire from his abdomen alerting him to the fact that he'd been punched in the stomach. He choked as his suddenly-frozen diaphragm refused to draw air. Almost immediately the first blow was paired with an uppercut to the jaw, where the side of his tongue made unfortunate contact with the space between his teeth. The cloying metallic taste of fresh blood filled his mouth as white stars exploded in his vision.

Grimacing, he lashed out with his foot and managed to catch the shin of one of the thugs holding him upright. The young man yelped in pain but didn't loosen his grip; instead he jerked Sherlock's shoulder roughly to the side, nearly dislocating the joint as his cohort on the other side threw his weight in the opposite direction. Sherlock grit his teeth, careful to avoid his injured tongue, and summoned all the willpower at his disposal to remain as stoic as possible. Idiots might very well kill him, but damned if he was going to give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.

Next blow was a right hook to the face - far too predictable. He managed to shift his head enough to let the fist glance off his cheekbone, saving himself from a probable fracture, and took advantage of the ringleader's momentary skewed balance to try kicking again. This time he caught the idiot square in the groin; the man let out an agonised screech, followed by a string of rather colourful curses. Raucous laughter and a flurry of goading catcalls erupted from the small group of young thugs gathered around them.

"Hahaaa, holy shit!"

"Faggot's in for it now!"

"Fuckin' shank his ass, Jay!"

"Stick him like a hog!"

Jay seemed to force himself back upright, slowly returning to a standing position. All trace of joviality had vanished from his features as he advanced toward Sherlock with a furious, almost psychotic snarl.

Sherlock made a token attempt to yank himself free of the men holding him in place. They just pulled the near-dislocation trick again, forcing him to stand still or risk having his shoulders popped out of place. Seeing no alternative he did his best to fix an unimpressed expression on his face and tried to ignore the cloying sensation of stagnant blood beginning to pool in his mouth as Jay approached.

"That," the man said, face a mask of pure unadulterated rage, "was _not_ a good idea."

From the back pocket of faded jeans the man produced an ivory-handled switchblade. Sharp steel flashed dangerously in the speckled light filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead.

Sherlock eyed the weapon warily. A sense of irritated resignation began to settle in his chest - so this was how it was all going to end, was it? Not assassinated by some terror group or kidnapped for use as blackmail against his brother; not even graced with the brief giddy thrill and final spectacular flare-out of a massive cocaine overdose. No, he was simply going to be stabbed in the gut by some two-bit criminal in a bloody swamp on the outskirts of Tallahassee. What a poignant fucking legacy.

Jay was within inches of Sherlock's face now. The dark-skinned man's features split into a wicked half-smile as he brought his knife up to Sherlock's throat, pressing the point into the space under his chin. Sherlock forced his expression to remain neutral and met his soon-to-be murderer's gaze in a level stare.

"Any last words, white boy?"

Sherlock sneered. Milliseconds stretched by in static silence.

Then with a sudden jolt he wrenched himself forward and spat a gob of blood straight into Jay's face. The man reared back with an angry yell, swiping at his eyes, but almost immediately lurched back forward with another savage snarl. Quick as lightning he grabbed Sherlock by the right shoulder and rammed a knee solidly into the smaller man's diaphragm.

Sherlock choked again and curled in on himself in pain. Before he could so much as gasp for breath the hand left his shoulder to instead fist in his hair; he grimaced as his skull was yanked upwards by the scalp, cold press of the knife now at his jugular.

 _Going to slit my throat, then, not stab me,_ he found himself thinking in a sort of detached, stress-fogged daze. Jay was saying something - probably a threatening speech of some sort, cement his status as the alpha male of the pack. Meant to intimidate his victim and impress his cohorts. Sherlock was far too busy being distracted by his own brain to bother listening.

_... suppose that's really the best option, anyway. Quickest death. Acute blood loss should be interesting to experience firsthand - is it like falling asleep, or more drawn out? Likely won't be conscious for long either way, vasculature probably dilated thanks to elevated temperature. Should speed up the bleeding. And oh good lord speaking of the heat that bastard's wearing a bloody leather jacket, how is he not dead of hyperthermia!? It feels like we're in a damned oven! Who in god's name would choose to live in this atrocious excuse for a habitable climate?_

A brief scowl crossed his face as it occurred to him that he was spending his last few precious moments of life being annoyed by the weather. That would be him, then: chronically off-topic right to the bitter end.

From somewhere off to their left came the short, clipped wail of a police siren. Jay's hand jerked away from Sherlock's neck as the man stiffened up and whipped his head toward the tree line like a spooked gopher. All around them his cronies did the same.

 _"Fuckin' cheese it!"_ one of the boys in the back of the group shouted, and with a suddenness that felt very much as if the ground had dropped out from under him Sherlock abruptly found himself released from his captors' grips. Startled, he collapsed face-first into the dirt in a graceless heap. Above him he heard the thugs scatter in frantic retreat away into the forest.

Merciful serendipity. Would have been nice to have it arrive a bit sooner, though, Sherlock mused... like perhaps before he'd been kneed in the stomach. He turned his head to the side so as not to be inhaling mud, coughed up a thin trickle of blood - hopefully stemming from his cut tongue rather than an internal injury. Ugh but _god_ , wouldn't that just make this day one perfect fuck-up? A sodding intestinal bleed on top of everything else.

Oh well. At the very least a police officer would likely come through the area within a few minutes, probably pack him off to a medical facility of some sort. That meant an easy meal, proper bed, clean clothes... all alarmingly scarce resources of late. Silver lining to the whole mess, he supposed.

Of course he'd still have to escape the hospital in a day or so to avoid having his forged travel documents scrutinised too carefully, but that wouldn't be difficult. Far preferable to going to the bother of evading detection right now, at any rate. Best just lie here and wait.

Ten seemingly-endless minutes later, however, and Sherlock was forced to come to the conclusion that the police were not in fact headed his way. Evidently they'd chosen to pursue the crowd of fleeing suspects instead of venturing into the small wooded area. Made some level of sense, considering the lot of them had run off toward the city and not gone further into the trees, but it was still rather unfortunate. Meant Sherlock was going to have to pick himself up.

Alright, well... that was fine. He'd manage. Sod the police anyway.

Sore, bloodied, exhausted and covered in mud Sherlock slowly forced his uncooperative body into a standing position. Good start. Next, walking. Stumbled into a tree here or there as he made his way to the pavement, nearly tripped over a rock. Probably looked like a drunken idiot. Not that anyone noticed, of course - no sign of either law enforcement or street gangs anywhere nearby.

Probably for the best, really. Though he'd have appreciated the cops hanging around to check for potential victims at the very least. Wasn't that their job? Protecting citizens? True he wasn't _technically_ a member of their jurisdiction, being a foreign national, but they'd have no knowledge of that. Might have left a true-born patriot to bleed out in the mud for all they knew. Incompetent morons.

Upon reaching the street he staggered sideways and leant heavily on a telephone pole as his knees threatened to give out on him. Dizzy, starting to feel faint. Hadn't eaten in around a day and a half now, likely wasn't doing himself any favours expending so much energy to remain upright. Not much choice in the matter though. Keep moving or die.

Despite the grim finality of this mental ultimatum his legs decided to choose that moment to fold underneath him. He slid down to land in an undignified slouch on the pavement, spine digging painfully into the black-tarred wood of the pole behind him. So much for walking, then. With a slight groan of pain he tilted his head back, stared up into the perfect blue of a clear sunny sky.

Cloudless, empty save a lone passing bird... nothing at all like England. And how could it be that even the _atmosphere_ looked different here? It was the wrong shade of blue. Everything about this place was just so alien and unwelcoming... christ, should have never left New York. At least among the skyscrapers he'd been nearly able to fool himself into thinking he was back in London.

These thoughts occupied him for about a minute before he closed his eyes and let his head loll to the side. Sod it all, might as well fall asleep where he sat. Maybe the thugs would come back and finish what they'd started. Sherlock doubted he could even muster the energy to flip them off at this point.

Fog drifted in tendrils through his mind as his brain began to lose its grip on consciousness. Still frankly dying of heat, but that was a minor complaint in comparison to the sour taste of blood in his mouth and the dull ache of a million bruised muscles. Perspiration dripping down his chest, too, soaking through the thin cotton of his t-shirt… he wondered vaguely if it were possible to sweat to death. Likely to find out in an hour or so.

He huffed a tired sigh and waited for oblivion.

"Oh good graces, dear! You've had a rough time of it, haven't you?"

Sherlock blinked his way out of the clinging wreaths of lethargic mist and squinted up into the dark shadows of a figure standing haloed by the sun overhead. Above him the person shifted, bent forward slightly. Out of the glare of the sun he could now see it was an elderly woman, perhaps in her late fifties, with brownish-auburn hair and a friendly, care-worn face. She smiled down at him and reached out with the arm not holding a shopping bag to place a cool hand on his forehead.

"Goodness, you're burning up! What on earth are you doing sitting round out in the sun on a day like this?"

Sherlock stared blankly up at her. It took an inordinate handful of seconds for his brain to finally catch up to the fact that the cadence of her voice actually sounded halfway normal to his ears for a change.

"… you're English," he remarked in a bit of a dazed mumble. The woman gave him an odd sort of look and patted him on the shoulder.

"Last I checked, yes. Now, where do you live? Nearby? Is there someone I can call for you? Oh, well, I haven't got a phone on me… but I suppose you must do, hm? Young folks with their technology these days."

Sherlock made a halfhearted effort to push himself into a more upright position but was forced to give up as his bruised stomach protested the movement. He curled an arm around his midsection instead and drug one of his legs up to lean his head on his knee.

"Not from the area, haven't got a mobile," he replied to the woman's semi-rambling inquiries in a faint monotone. Ugh, he was starting to feel sick to his stomach.

"Oh! Bless my stars, but you're a London boy!" the old woman exclaimed - apparently she'd failed to catch his accent in the slurred mumble of his first words. "Well what are the odds of that, I wonder?"

"Doubtless astronomical," Sherlock responded wearily. He grimaced against the pain now radiating up from his abdomen and hugged his arm more tightly round his stomach. _Fuck_ , maybe he'd sustained an internal injury after all.

Regarding him with a concerned look on her face the stranger shifted her hand to briefly grip his shoulder in a sort of comforting gesture. "You are in a right shape, aren't you?" she murmured, seemingly to herself. After a short pause she nodded in a determined sort of way and moved round to hook an arm under Sherlock's armpit.

"What're you-?" he asked, confused, and lifted his head from his knee to blink sidelong at her. She flexed her knees in an ineffectual attempt to lift him up.

"Well come on, then, don't make me do all the work!" she quipped when it became apparent he wasn't going to budge on her strength alone. Sherlock stared at her for a second more, then slowly, obligingly shifted his legs into a better position for standing. Between the two of them they managed to get him mostly upright, though he swayed rather badly and was forced to lean the majority of his bodyweight on her shoulders. Hopefully she was somewhat stronger than her appearance would suggest else they'd both soon find themselves facedown on the pavement.

"Oof! You're a bit heavier than you look, dear," she exclaimed in an amused huff. "My car's just round the corner, then. Off we go."

Sherlock's brain seemed to be spinning itself round in little dizzying circles inside his skull. He tried not to grimace too obviously. _Ugh_ , he was going to have to escape from hospital in this state, wasn't he? Bloody hell.

"I don't need medical attention," he lied, hoping to head off the inevitable debacle of a crowded American emergency room and subsequent deportation over his long-expired travel visa. "If you could just drop me off at a hostel or something…"

"Oh nonsense!" the stranger cut over him. "You're dead on your feet, we're getting you to a doctor."

"I really can't afford a hospital visit," he objected. Not strictly true in a monetary sense (he'd simply refuse to pay – on principle if nothing else) but financial hardship made for a far less damning argument than ' _I'd like to avoid being arrested'._

"Good job we're not headed to one, then, isn't it? Now mind your head, roof's a tad low."

Without giving Sherlock a chance to ask what on earth she was on about the woman reached out and unlocked the small hatchback they'd come upon. Opening the passenger door she all but shoved him into the seat. He complied with a slightly startled noise of complaint as the door slammed shut beside him.

There was a thump as the old woman stowed her shopping in the backseat, then a tick later she came round to the driver's side. With a friendly smile in his direction (which was met by a confused half-glare) she deftly started up the vehicle.

"Mrs. Hudson, by the way," she informed him in a chipper, genial tone.

Sherlock quirked a brow - no mention of a first name? - but was distracted from any of a million possible responses by the road they'd pulled onto. Passing cars from the wrong side, entire street completely backwards, everything looking just distressingly off-kilter. No matter how many bus rides he took in this blasted country he still always found himself expecting to crash headlong into oncoming traffic at any moment.

"It does take a little getting used to, driving on this side," Mrs. Hudson spoke up. Apparently he'd been obvious enough for her to catch on to the source of his discomfort. "Comes well enough with practise, though, just like anything." She smiled sidelong at him again, then raised her eyebrows in slight disapproval as she turned back to the road. "You know it's polite to introduce yourself back, dear."

"Huh? Oh," Sherlock looked away from the traffic, tried to remember what his current alias was. It had been so long since he'd had a non-confrontational conversation with anyone, let alone been asked for his name… he'd quite forgotten his pseudonym. What had it started with…? An R, maybe, or…

"Not a fake name, if you please," Mrs. Hudson said, cutting into his thoughts. She flicked the turn signal and calmly checked her wing mirror as she changed lanes. "Not that I mind, of course, but it's in case you pass out. You'll not answer to whatever silly thing you're thinking up now and it'll be a dreadful hassle."

Sherlock frowned at her. How did she even know what he'd been-? A guess, had to be. He wasn't _that_ easy to read.

"I wasn't-"

"You clearly were, dear."

He scowled and shifted his head to look out the window. Well… maybe the injuries had undermined his usual façade. Didn't mean he had to admit to it, though. Give her a pseudonym anyway, just out of spite. Glaring irritably at a passing lorry he supplied the first name off the top of his head.

"Frank."

Mrs. Hudson clicked her tongue in disapproval. "No, try again."

Sherlock turned back to fix her with an affronted look. "That's my name."

"It isn't, though."

"How would you know?" he snapped with a slight huff. Mrs. Hudson quirked a wry smile.

"I've been a schoolteacher for a very long time, dear. I know when a young man's lying to me."

He turned back to the window with a glower. Keep trying random names until she gave up, then, or… he caught sight of her vaguely bemused, expectant brow raise out of the reflection off the glass. No, she'd be waiting for that tactic now. What would be the least obvious…? Ugh, _fuck's sake._ How was he being predicted so easily?

After an interminable pause Sherlock finally crossed an arm over his still-aching stomach and slouched down grumpily in his seat.

"It's Sherlock," he supplied, voice gone flat and vaguely petulant. Well… whatever. Not like she could get much information on him with just a first name anyway. Even a unique one like his still required a surname to pinpoint family connections.

Mrs. Hudson smiled. "Much better, thank you." A second passed, then she smirked to herself. "Fair enough, though… with a name like that I suppose I'd make up an alias too."

"Pleased to meet you as well," Sherlock growled back at her, insulted tone making it clear he'd taken offence to the jab. Mrs. Hudson just chuckled.

"Best see if you can rest, it's a bit of a drive yet."

With that she turned her attention back to the road. Sherlock glared at her for a moment, but dropped the expression in favour of wincing at the twinges of pain flashing through his nervous system. He slouched down lower in his seat and blinked away a sudden wave of fatigue. Shouldn't sleep, not trapped alone with a stranger. Focus on breathing instead. In, out, in… out…

Consciousness began to slip from his mind like so much water. Couldn't quite force himself to sit up straighter to ward off the drowsiness - too much work, too painful. He rested his head on the cool glass of the car window instead.

Without really meaning to he closed his eyes. Awareness soon scattered away amid the steady hum of a car engine.

**««**


	2. Chapter 2

**««**

Sherlock drifted back to consciousness with the cut of the engine. Devoid of the constant low drone of traffic he found himself confused by the sudden silence. _Where...?_ He blinked around dazedly for a few seconds before the car door opening with a jolt beside him nearly sent him sprawling out of the vehicle.

"Oops! Sorry, dear, didn't know you were still leaning on it," the cheery voice of Mrs. Hudson said with a laugh. She reached out to steady him before he could fall sideways, but he waved her off. Grimacing for the abuse to his bruised abdominal muscles Sherlock slowly shifted himself to climb out of the car on his own.

"You live here," he deduced after a pause to take in his surroundings. It wasn't much of a guess, really. The house was a two-storey bungalow with a sloping roof and rustic brick-and-mortar construction. Close neighbours on either side were hidden by a thick buffer of trees and well-tended shrubbery, with the main body of the garden taken up by a variety of flowers and berry bushes. Dominating the centre of the lawn was a large shade tree of some variety Sherlock couldn't identify, a whitewashed rope-and-wood swinging seat hanging from its thick branches. All in all it looked a picture-perfect rendition of the quintessential elderly domicile.

Mrs. Hudson _hmm_ 'ed in warm confirmation. "Been working on the garden this year. Aren't the blueberries lovely? Only the birds make off with most of them, you know. They say you're meant to put nets up to stop them but that just looks so dreadful amongst the petunias."

She was supporting Sherlock by the left elbow now, something he'd have found intolerably annoying were he not in a sorry enough state to actually need the stability. As she spoke she began to gently guide him in the direction of the house's arched entryway.

"Yoohoo!" she called as they walked. "Harold, dear! We've a guest!"

"Maude decided to visit after all, did she?" an American-accented voice replied from somewhere near the open front window. Sherlock noted the shift of patterned lace curtains as whoever was inside moved away from what was presumably a sitting area towards the front door.

"Oh, no, she's still sick off those Mexican pears," Mrs. Hudson replied, sounding as if she didn't entirely sympathise with this 'Maude' character's plight. "I did tell her not to buy anything from that Hispanic fellow, but what can you do?" she added to Sherlock, who merely blinked down at her in blank confusion. What did pears or old womens' purchasing decisions have to do with him?

"Who're we entertaining, then?"

Ahead of them the screen door of the front porch opened, revealing an elder gentleman with a head of thick white hair, wire-frame spectacles and a close-cropped, sand-and-pepper beard. He raised his eyebrows skeptically as he caught sight of Sherlock leaning unsteadily into Mrs. Hudson's side.

"Trading me in for a younger model?" the man asked with a wry, teasing glance to his wife.

Mrs. Hudson flapped her hand in amused exasperation. "Oh hush, you. This is Sherlock, lad's had a dreadful time of it. Make some use of yourself and have a look at him while I get some tea on, won't you?"

"I'm fine, really," Sherlock piped up. He was beginning to feel uncomfortably as if he'd been thrust into a situation he hadn't signed up for. Who the hell was this man...? Mrs. Hudson's husband, doubtless... but then who exactly was _she_? Just some elderly lady who'd plucked him up off the street and decided to cart him off to her home without so much as a by-your-leave... he should _really_ get the hell out of here before everything had a chance to go pear-shaped.

"He isn't at all," Mrs. Hudson corrected as her husband's eyebrows lifted once more in a questioning look. "Boy's just being stubborn." She turned to Sherlock with a kind smile. "Harold's a doctor, dear, he'll have you patched up in a blink."

With that she patted Sherlock on the shoulder and all but forced him into the support of Harold.

"You'll be wanting milk and sugar, I expect? Oh I haven't had anyone round who could appreciate a good cuppa in ages!" Her cheerful voice trailed off as she disappeared into the house with her shopping swinging merrily from one arm.

Sherlock blinked after her, then glanced over (and _up_ , he was somewhat disgruntled to find) to meet the eyes of the man now assisting his balance. Harold flashed a tight smile down at him, one shoulder lifting in a vaguely resigned shrug.

"You'll have to forgive the wife. Stubborn as hell, that woman." Releasing Sherlock's arm he indicated a plastic seat on the porch to their left. "Sit there, then. I'd invite you in but you're covered in mud."

Sherlock didn't bother replying, too occupied with the business of lowering himself to sit down without making it obvious that his stomach muscles were sending spikes of hellfire through his abdomen with every movement. And ugh good lord the bloody _heat_... though, mercifully, the shade of the Hudsons' front deck seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping the ambient temperature at a near-tolerable level.

Harold clicked his tongue in disapproval as he observed the slow progress of the young man in front of him. "You look beat to hell, son. Get yourself mugged?"

"I, er... may have insulted a street gang," Sherlock explained with a slight grimace. He'd finally managed to arrange himself somewhat comfortably in the plastic-padded deck chair and was now trying to stifle the impulse to curl his legs up to his chest. Muddy trainers on the furniture... probably not a good way to ingratiate himself to his hosts.

"Oh! Well, then, that explains why Bunny dragged you home," Harold exclaimed in surprise, apparently catching his accent. "British?"

Sherlock nodded. "London."

"Great city, met Bunny when I was over there for an immunology conference. Could use less traffic, though... Wait right there a minute, I'll grab the first aid kit."

He vanished into the house after his wife, rolling up the sleeves of his smart plaid buttonup as he went. Sherlock waited until the man was out of sight, then curled over on himself in pained discomfort. Argh, if his stupid abdomen would just quit _whingeing_ for a moment perhaps he could gather the strength to make a run for it before this elderly couple abducted him like some sort of disturbing foster grandchild. Not that the thought of a cup of tea and perhaps a bed wasn't unreasonably tempting right now, but he'd been wandering the streets of foreign countries long enough to have developed a healthy wariness of any sort of volunteered kindness. Especially toward the likes of him.

What did they want? What were they hoping to accomplish with their help? Nothing, maybe... actions most likely rooted in pity for the moment. But when that sympathy waned, what then? After all Sherlock was only being halfway amenable at the moment because he could do literally nothing else. Give him time to heal up a bit and he'd doubtless be right back to his usual impulsive, tactless brand of fuck-up social interaction. Kicked out of their home, fine - he didn't care about that. But he'd really rather they not take it upon themselves to call the authorities...

"Alright, son. Sit up and let me have a look at you."

Sherlock craned his head slightly to regard Harold, who had returned without his noticing and was now standing over him with a professional-looking first aid kit in one hand and a damp washcloth in the other. Around the man's neck was a worn stethoscope.

"Now, to be fair I'm an oncologist," he informed Sherlock as the younger man reluctantly straightened up from his pathetic curled-up position on the chair. "So patching up vagrant kids isn't exactly my specialty... Bunny's adamant, though, so we'll do our best."

"Thank you," Sherlock offered, feeling like he should probably at least make an _attempt_ to not be a complete arse right off the bat. Best to remain civil until the doctor determined whether or not he was likely to die of internal injuries, at any rate.

Harold didn't reply right away - he was too busy studying Sherlock's left arm, which he'd taken hold of to check for a pulse. A look of intense disapproval pulled at his aged features as he regarded the pale limb. With a start Sherlock realised his skin was still marred by a small collection of faded needle scars, clearly visible in his current short-sleeved attire. He made to tug his arm back and was relieved when the man released it without a fuss.

"First stray cats, now she's dragging home junkies," Harold muttered irritably to himself as he turned to dig through his medical kit. Sherlock's expression darkened.

"I'm not a junkie," he snapped defensively.

Harold huffed a sigh as he turned back to his erstwhile charge. "No? Injecting insulin straight into your radial vein, then?" he said in a tone of withering sarcasm. "Listen, son, I've been on city ER rotation more times than I care to remember. You're a drug addict if I ever saw one."

" _Ex_ -addict," Sherlock asserted. "I quit four months ago."

"Oh, four whole months!" Harold snorted, plainly unimpressed. "Yeah, yeah. Listen: if I find anything even _resembling_ dope in my home I'll have you locked up faster than you can blink, got that? My wife might have it in her head everyone's a good soul in need of her tender care but I'm not about to end up on the wrong side of a drug war for the sake of some roughed-up street kid."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sherlock retorted with a sneer. The insulted, defiant expression on his face unfortunately lost a lot of its impact when he was forced to drop it in favour of a pained wince - he'd shifted his upper body too quickly and set his muscles cramping again.

Harold's stern features softened marginally. After a short pause he gestured to Sherlock's t-shirt. "Strip that off so I can see, then. Where exactly were you hit?"

A few acutely uncomfortable minutes passed during which Sherlock found himself poked and prodded in a not-entirely-gentle manner as Harold checked him over. The doctor _hemmed_ and _hawed_ over whatever information he was managing to pick up through his stethoscope and probing ministrations, disinfecting cuts here and there and applying sticking plasters where appropriate. Sherlock, for his part, simply tried to remain as still as possible.

"Tea, dears! How goes it?" Mrs. Hudson's over-chipper voice cut in. The elderly woman had appeared in the front doorway with a tray full of what looked like tea and biscuits.

"Badly bruised diaphragm but nothing to suggest an internal bleed. Definitely dehydrated, and I'm guessing half-starved." Harold leant back on the stool he'd perched on and nodded matter-of-factly to himself as he accepted a chocolate biscuit from his wife. He flashed Sherlock a smile that didn't quite seem to reach his eyes. "Think you'll live, son."

Sherlock wasn't sure how to respond and settled for a vague nod in lieu of speaking. What now, then...? He didn't suppose he'd be asked to stay, considering the less-than-warm reception of Mrs. Hudson's husband upon catching sight of the needle scars. Would it be rude to ask for a lift back to something approaching a city centre, though? Didn't fancy having to find his own way out of some labyrinthine American suburb. Not in this weather.

His internal questions were promptly rendered moot however when he realised with a start that Mrs. Hudson appeared to have made off with his shirt. Harold laughed good-naturedly at Sherlock's sudden scandalised expression and passed over the tray of biscuits and tea his wife had left with them.

"She'll be back with one of mine, don't worry. Not that you really need a shirt in this weather, eh? Eighty seven degrees last I checked."

A bolt of alarmed confusion shot through Sherlock's brain at the absurdly high number - _eighty seven!?_ \- but it waned as quickly as it had come upon remembering the existence of the Fahrenheit scale. Oh, right... Harold meant it was around thirty out. Bloody Americans. With a slight annoyed frown for his own lapse in memory he leant carefully forwards and plucked up what looked like a glass of ice water _(hot tea in this climate... ugh, no thank you)_ and a biscuit. Trapped here for the moment, it seemed, unless he wanted to abscond shirtless into the blistering afternoon sun. Might as well make the best of things.

"So how old are you, then? Late teens I'm guessing?" Harold had settled back into his deck chair and was now watching Sherlock eat. A somewhat disconcerting look of intense speculation pierced sharp through the lenses of his spectacles - almost as if he were waiting for his guest to screw up somehow, give him an excuse to toss him out... or worse. Sherlock swallowed and tried not to let the creeping sense of wariness show in his body language.

"Twenty," he supplied.

Harold clucked in disapproval. "And already hooked on heroin? Didn't waste any time, did you?"

"It was cocaine," Sherlock corrected, an offended scowl stealing over his features. "And I only started last year, I was clean before then."

"Except for the cigarettes," Harold countered with a bland nod to the half-empty pack of Marlboros beginning to work its way out of Sherlock's jeans pocket. Sherlock glanced down and shoved the box back out of sight.

"Nicotine doesn't count."

Harold chuckled humourlessly to himself, shaking his head in clear disagreement. Before he could reply however a beaming Mrs. Hudson bustled through the open doorway carrying a small stack of clothing.

"The shirt'll be a bit loose on you, dear, but the trousers should fit. I found an old pair of Joshua's." She said this last to her husband, whose expression darkened fractionally before smoothing back to something more neutral. Mrs. Hudson didn't seem to catch the shift in his demeanour, too distracted by her self-appointed mission of dragging Sherlock out of his seat and towards the door. "Trainers off, then, so you don't track mud in. Now the bathroom's down this way..."

Sherlock was too bewildered to really object as he was led rather forcibly down the hall _(white carpeting, powder blue walls, a multitude of framed photographs and a crimson vase on a table holding a bouquet of white carnations and ferns)_ and found himself deposited in a tidy little guest lavatory at the back of the house. Mrs. Hudson patted him happily on the shoulder before turning to leave the room.

"Just set your things on the counter and I'll add them to the wash later!" she called through the door as she closed it behind her. Sherlock was left alone in a strange bathroom clutching an armful of unfamiliar clothing, blinking at a framed arrangement of pressed flowers on the back of the white-washed wooden door now shut in front of his face.

Er... alright then. Apparently he was to have a shower.

Figuring out how the damned tap worked proved to be a bit of an ordeal, but with a bit of finagling he managed. Half an hour later he emerged feeling much less like he was about to drown in his own perspiration. Clean clothes, too, which proved to be an unexpectedly welcome change. He'd been forced to wear the same outfit for going on three days now, having lost his knapsack to some enterprising young thief during a night spent unadvisedly sleeping on a park bench. Luckily being an accomplished pickpocket himself meant he'd long since taken to carrying his passport and other important documents tucked securely into the waistband of his jeans, money and cigs stowed in a front pocket where he'd be likely to notice them missing. Didn't mean he hadn't been _severely_ miffed over the loss of his nicotine patches, clothes, and the scant collection of books and other knickknacks he'd been toting around, however.

Though to be perfectly honest he'd been most dismayed to lose his Oxford sweatshirt... ragged and in desperate need of repair it had been, yes, but the thing held some measure of sentimental value. He and that hoodie had been through a lot together, after all. Accepting the reality of never seeing it again had formed a large portion of his dawdling in finding a thrift shop to replace his belongings. Perhaps he could find the thief, he'd thought - accost them and get his things back...? Couldn't be _that_ difficult. How far could they have gotten?

But of course Tallahassee was an enormous, spread-out jumble of a city, and no matter how much Sherlock wandered the back streets looking for a likely suspect he'd come up empty-handed. Sniping back at a heckling street gang as he passed their corner had been an act of frustration in his final hours of fruitless searching. An impulsive choice which, as per usual, had landed him in far more dire straits than he'd started out with.

Say what one would about the numerous downsides of cocaine, but the longer Sherlock went without the stuff the more he found himself desperately missing that blessed peace of knowing he wasn't about to do something enormously stupid with each and every decision. Without the enforced self-discipline of drugs he was back to that age-old game of roulette; just waiting moment by moment to see how badly he'd fucked himself over this time.

Being on his own and thus relatively free of the hassle of human interaction mitigated the usual bouts of crippling social anxiety, granted, but a certain baseline level of stress still lingered. Too many opportunities for him to ruin things, too many thoughtless actions sneaking through before he could exert enough willpower to stop them. Seemed there was nothing for it, though... he'd simply have to get used to living in constant dread of his own idiocy.

But that was fine, really... he'd dealt with it well enough before discovering coke, hadn't he? That feeling of sick trepidation and wary mistrust of himself had defined his life for _years._ Just because he now knew how easy things could be didn't mean he wasn't still fully capable of accepting the inherent difficulties of his existence.

The trousers Mrs. Hudson had foisted on him were actually quite comfortable - loose khaki-type things - and the t-shirt was indeed oversized but softer than the one he'd been wearing before and not entirely unbecoming. _(Though the logo of some cancer foundation emblazoned on the front was a rather distractingly garish shade of violet on white.)_ He didn't bother trying to find a comb for his hair, which had by this point grown long enough to actually need one, and instead did his best to pick out the tangles with his fingers while he cautiously stuck his head around the open bathroom door in search of his hosts.

Within minutes of the shower tap shutting off Mrs. Hudson appeared in the hall.

"Oh, much better!" she exclaimed cheerfully, catching sight of him. "You do make a handsome sight without all the mud."

He furrowed his brows slightly ( _handsome...? was she mocking him?_ ) and turned his attention toward the laundry bag in her hands. She smiled blithely and bustled past him to scoop his discarded garments into it, leaving the small pile of miscellaneous objects he'd emptied out of his pockets untouched on the tiled countertop.

"Now I expect you're knackered, so don't worry about sitting down for supper. I'll bring something in for you." Gesturing for him to pick up his belongings (cigarettes, lighter, passport and travel documents along with a scant few dollars in change and a handful of random baubles) she herded him down the hall once more and into what appeared to be a spare bedroom. The décor was mostly done up in pale blues and greens, with the same white carpeting as the rest of the house and a tan quilted bedspread. He paused in the doorway, only just now noticing that the air indoors was a very comfortable 20-odd degrees and that the sweltering humidity that had plagued him ever since his first ill-advised foray toward the southern states seemed to have vanished. _Air conditioning_ , he realised... christ, what a godsend.

"This is Joshua's old room," Mrs. Hudson informed him. For the first time since he'd met her the energetic smile on her aged face seemed to droop a few notches. She took a step forward and gently touched a framed photograph sitting on the nightstand.

Sherlock followed her into the room (slowly, still, as his stomach hadn't stopped aching) and regarded the picture over her shoulder. A young man in perhaps his late teens or early twenties, with short reddish-brown hair, wide celery green eyes and a face full of freckles stood grinning in a set of graduation robes with a rolled-up diploma clutched in his hands.

The freckles and general shape of the face sparked an unexpected flash of memory in Sherlock's mind, and he spoke without really meaning to. "He looks like my ex-boyfriend."

Immediately he scowled at himself and resisted the urge to smack his forehead in exasperation. _Fuck's sake_ , what had prompted him to say that? His short, doomed foray into romantic prospects was none of this woman's business. _Particularly_ considering the country he was in, which boasted an exceptionally poor track record of tolerance when it came to same-sex couples. _Learn to keep your bloody mouth shut, idiot._

Mrs. Hudson didn't seem to acknowledge his gaffe, though. Instead she just smiled wistfully and hummed a little to herself. "He was a good lad, Joshua. Harold's sister's boy. We took him in when his parents passed, bless their souls. Lived here for about five years before, well..."

"He died?" Sherlock asked, forgetting in his lingering irritation with himself to try and be tactful.

"Oh no, dear!" Mrs. Hudson exclaimed with a short laugh. "No, no... well, not that I know of, anyway! Last I heard he was in Michigan. He and Harold had a bit of row, you see, and he left last August. I do miss the boy terribly."

"Oh." Sherlock frowned and wondered if this meant he was being appropriated as some sort of bizarre replacement nephew. Supposed it didn't matter if he was... still meant free food and a bed, after all.

"Now Sherlock, you just lie down and get some rest." Again with the steering him about, Mrs. Hudson all but forced him into a sitting position on the bedspread. If she weren't a pleasant little old lady he'd have verbally eviscerated her by now for all the uninvited touching. As things were he was merely starting to get a tad annoyed... not quite enough to say anything, though. Too tired and sore to bother.

Humming to herself, Mrs. Hudson left the room with her laundry bag. Presumably she was off to see to the wash. Sherlock watched her until she was gone from his line of sight, then glanced over to the photograph of Joshua again.

In all objectivity the man really didn't look _that_ similar to Eric. It was just the freckles... perhaps the shape of the eyes at a stretch. Sherlock frowned deeply and reached out to turn the frame so it was facing the other way regardless. He'd been doing well these past few months in avoiding any thought of the brief period he'd spent in Stockwell. Resisting the all-too-frequent temptation to look up how his former partner was faring, find out what he was doing with his life. Had he invested the money Sherlock had given him wisely? Gone back to school, or perhaps bought a house... started a business? There had been more than enough cash to do any of those things and more.

Discovering the answers wouldn't be difficult - commandeer a library PC for a few hours, break into some government records, (perhaps screw around with one of Mycroft's projects while he was at it) - but it wouldn't help anything. Sherlock would only be reminded of the life he'd left behind... too tempted to book the next flight back to England, seek out Eric and apologise until they could be together again. For good, this time.

Ugh but _no._ It would never happen, you bloody idiot. Stop dwelling on stupid nonsense.

Removing his hand from the photo frame he dumped his collection of items on the table beside it and let himself flop (gently) into the fluffed pillows of the unfamiliar bed. Eric hadn't liked _him_ , he reminded himself sternly - he'd only liked the person Sherlock was with cocaine. Same as everyone else did. Without drugs Sherlock Holmes was nothing more than an impulsive, tactless git with a head full of useless knowledge and zero common sense. Bullied and shunned for the majority of his life, and rightly so, because he tended to behave like a complete lunatic while sober. Eric would tire of his eccentrics within a week and then he'd be right back where he'd started: facing the inexorable choice between social isolation and chemical dependency.

He'd already been down one of those paths. And being an addict hadn't worked in the slightest, so he was left with the former option as his sole recourse. Which meant that thinking of Eric - or anyone back home, really - was nothing but a pointless waste of time. Only logical action was to stop immediately.

Sherlock rolled over onto his side with his back facing the nightstand and forced himself to do maths in his head as a distraction. Chemical reactions, physics...

He barely made it through half a dozen equations before his eyes began to slip shut of their own volition.

For the second time in as many hours he lost himself to slumber.

**««**


	3. Chapter 3

**««**

The first thing Sherlock became aware of was a disgusting, metallic taste in his mouth and a niggling itch in his throat. Following that there was the sensation of a blanket tucked neatly around his shoulders, a pillow under his head, weak light filtering through his eyelids... and above all else a deep, insistent desire for a cigarette.

He frowned and reluctantly opened his eyes. All around him the soft palette of an unfamiliar bedroom stood bathed in the cheerful bright light of an early spring morning. Sunshine fell in stripes over his midsection through the slats of half-opened venetian blinds, a sense of peaceful tranquillity seeming to cloak the very air. The entire house was quiet and still, faint chirping warble of birdsong outside the only sound to break the silence.

At some point during the night someone had covered him with a thin, sage-green quilt, which for whatever subconscious reason he'd tugged partially over his head in his sleep. The fabric now draped across his face smelled vaguely of moth balls and that peculiar earthlike scent of wooden storage chests. Not entirely unpleasant, but he shoved it away regardless. Too strong a sensation to process this early in the morning.

Moving turned out to be a rather poor idea - every muscle in his body seemed to have gone sore and stiff overnight. He gasped a tiny hiss of pain upon attempting to uncurl his midsection and immediately went still again. Alright, wait, wait... probably best to take things slowly. Or... perhaps not at all? The thought of simply refusing to move ever again was sorely tempting; he could just tug the blanket over his head again and go back to sleep, wouldn't that be easiest? Ignore the whole problem until it went away of its own accord. Maybe then this uncomfortable scratch in his throat would fade away as well.

The portion of his brain responsible for being absolutely dependent on nicotine didn't seem too keen on that plan, however. Barely a minute had passed before he found himself grimacing against the stabbing ache caused by rolling over onto his back. Blindly he tossed out an arm for his cigarettes and lighter abandoned on the bedside table the afternoon previous. Just one fag, his nicotine-starved brain insisted, then he could curl back up in bed.

Instead of the smooth cardboard of a cig packet, though, his hand bumped into what felt like a ceramic plate. He opened one eye from the squinting wince his face had twisted into and glanced over, trying to figure out what exactly he was touching. It was indeed a covered serving dish, with a note neatly folded atop it.

Confused, he snatched up the small card from its place on the white china and rubbed his eyes tiredly as he tried to decipher the lines of tidy, over-embellished handwriting decorating cream-coloured paper.

_Sherlock -_

_Harold's off to the hospital for the day and I've some errands to run. I'll be back in an hour or so - make yourself at home. And do try to eat something, you're far too thin for a boy your age!_

_Mrs. Hudson_

He blinked at the message a few times in blank befuddlement _(what did his weight matter to anyone?)_ then turned his attention to the serving dish. A careful upward nudge of the lid revealed a tray full of sliced fruits, a small bowl of some sort of oatmeal mixture and what appeared to be a boiled egg. A glass of once-chilled orange juice stood on a woven coaster next to it.

Sherlock wasn't particularly hungry - he rarely was first thing in the morning - but he grabbed a few slices of fruit and the glass of juice regardless as he retrieved his cigarette pack. Muscles protesting vehemently but he managed to drag himself to a sitting position without undue fuss. Mrs. Hudson had gone to the trouble of attempting to feed him, might as well take advantage of it. He scrubbed a hand through his hair _(fluffed up in messy ringlet curls now thanks to having slept on it wet... Mycroft used to tell him he looked like a sheep when it did that)_ and, yawning, stood up to shuffle blearily toward the front porch.

The morning was admittedly rather gorgeous. It seemed he'd slept for a ridiculous length of time - it was now well past sunrise, the light shimmering over dew-coated grass, air not yet given the chance to heat up to that unbearable sweltering temperature he'd grown to so thoroughly despise. Must be going on seven in the morning, he guessed... could have found out for sure but he wasn't motivated enough to bother finding a clock. Not like the exact time was important, anyway. All that mattered was that it was early, quiet... and cool enough to bloody _breathe_.

He ate the few slices of apple he'd picked up, listening to the birds chirping high in the trees. Swatting irritably at a passing mosquito he leant his elbows on the railing of the deck and finally got round to lighting a cigarette. With the first inhale a tide of blessed nicotine washed through his consciousness; dense fogbanks of fatigue and a small fraction of general aching soreness from his muscles ebbed away with the flow of chemicals. He took a sip of juice to rinse out the general disgusting taste of sleep, stale blood, and tobacco from his mouth, coughed into the crook of his elbow, then slouched his body forward over the deck rail to stare out at the garden.

Over in the far corner a small flock of sparrows were busy making off with the majority of Mrs. Hudson's blueberries. He took another drag off his cig and idly watched their antics. One of the larger ones appeared to be trying to browbeat a younger bird out of the way of the largest berry clusters, all frenzied chirping and sharp talons. Violent little bastard.

"Hey! Who're you!?"

Sherlock startled badly and snapped his eyes away from the bickering sparrows, the entire flock taking flight in a sudden flurry of wings in response to the shout of a childish voice. There in the middle of the stone walkway off to his right stood a young girl, perhaps six or seven years old, with honey blonde hair cut in an off-centre bob and a grass-stained yellow sun dress. She was holding a flower-patterned knapsack in her arms and frowning at him suspiciously.

"Are you Mrs. Hudson's grandson or something?" she asked without giving him a chance to answer her initial question. Her short hair bounced slightly as she looked him up and down with an appraising expression on her small face.

"No, just a houseguest," Sherlock explained. He glanced to the cigarette in his hand and shifted his wrist so it was at least partially hidden from sight - didn't fancy having to explain what it was to a primary school child. "Er... Mrs. Hudson's not in right now."

For some reason the girl's expression brightened at the sound of his voice. "You talk funny just like she does!"

Sherlock frowned. "It's not 'talking funny', it's an English accent."

" _Towk_ -ing," the girl mimicked with a giggle. "What's your name?"

"... Sherlock," he replied, voice slightly distracted as he attempted to surreptitiously pinch out his half-finished fag behind his back and tapped the unburnt tobacco out into the flowerbed below. He hesitated a moment before shoving the spent filter into his trouser pocket - didn't want to drop it into the garden... hopefully the fabric wouldn't absorb the scent of smoke.

"'Sherlock'...?" the little girl repeated dubiously. "That's a weird name."

"I'm aware," he deadpanned. Looking up, he realised she'd been walking forward the entire time they'd been speaking and was now standing on the grass just below him. A set of wax-and-wire orthodontics flashed like metal scaffolding on her teeth as she fixed him with a wide, enthusiastic smile.

"Sounds kinda like a superhero! _Sherlock, the Avenger!_ " She giggled again and shoved her knapsack onto the porch through a space in the railings, then followed it up by climbing through the adjacent slat. "I like it!"

"... Really?" Sherlock asked, furrowing his brows with a puzzled blink. That... wasn't quite the reaction he was used to.

"My name's Hayley," the girl informed him. She'd unzipped her bag and was now pulling out what appeared to be a florescent pink tea set made entirely of moulded plastic. Each piece was set reverently on the small patio table standing between the Hudsons' deck chairs.

Sherlock turned and leant on the porch railing as he watched Hayley unpack her satchel. She seemed to have an entire collection of tiny pink china. "What are you doing?"

"Mrs. Hudson said we could have a tea party today so I brought my tea stuff!" Hayley explained cheerfully. "You're a boy and boys are icky but you can be in the tea party too cause you talk like Mrs. Hudson."

"It's... nowhere near tea time," Sherlock countered, beginning to feel a bit bewildered. Who was this girl and what on earth was she doing here? Belatedly it occurred to him that perhaps asking her directly might be the best way of finding those things out. "Why are you wandering about the neighbourhood at this hour? Do your parents know you're out?"

Hayley scoffed childishly up at him. " _Duh_ , yes! Mrs. Hudson teaches me reading and stuff on Thursday mornings."

"You don't learn that in school?"

The girl rolled her eyes and took a few steps toward Sherlock to take uninvited hold of his hand. He startled as she began tugging him insistently toward her tea set with enough force that he nearly overbalanced.

"Daddy says school fills your head with Satan's lies," she informed him matter-of-factly. Sherlock blinked and tried not to look too unsettled... _was she bloody serious...?_ A half second later however he gave up and just fixed her with a disturbed expression. Oh sod being age-appropriate. This wasn't _his_ child - he had no responsibility to entertain religious delusions for the sake of not traumatising her. Particularly not when she was now literally _forcing_ him to have a seat at her garishly-coloured tea set.

"Your father is an insane person," he told her seriously. Hayley had finally succeeded in getting him to sit in a deck chair and shoved an undersized plastic teacup into his hands. The accompanying saucer was moulded to look like a circlet of tiny flower petals.

"Nah, he just loves Jesus a whole lot." She smiled blithely up at him, completely ignoring the disgusted, vaguely alarmed look on his face, and bent down to produce a teddy bear wearing a frilly lace dress from her knapsack. With reverent care she placed it on his right thigh and patted its furry head with a self-satisfied little nod. "This is Clarabelle, she's a real Southern lady so be polite."

Sherlock had no idea how she expected him to offend a stuffed bear. Neither, for that matter, could he fathom why the thing had to be _on his lap_ of all places. His attempt to relocate it to the table was met with a savage glare from Hayley, however, and fearing she'd retaliate with a tantrum he quickly put it back where she'd left it. Far too early in the morning to deal with a small child screeching at him over moving her toy, he decided. Best just go along with things.

With the bear safely replaced Hayley turned her attention to pouring the contents of a butterfly-patterned thermos into the pink teapot, humming a happy tune to herself.

"Mister Sherlock, would you like some tea?" she asked in an extremely poor imitation of an aristocratic accent. She held the now-full teapot out to him with her hands arranged in what she evidently thought was proper pouring form - obviously parroted from some television programme or the like, it mostly just looked ridiculous.

"You're doing that all wrong," Sherlock told her before he could think not to. When Hayley's ecstatic expression melted into a pout he deliberated for an awkward second before setting his little plastic teacup down to take the pot from her. Sod it... might as well show her how it was meant to be done. Wasn't like he had anything better to do with his time. "You have to hold the lid so it doesn't spill, see? Like this."

Hayley's eyes lit up as he properly poured the tea _(was it, though...? no, couldn't be, it was some sort of cloudy off-yellow liquid; juice, maybe)_ into her cup for her. She hopped up and down a few times in excitement.

"Oh! Neat, do it again!"

Sherlock couldn't quite stop a small bemused smile as he poured a cup of whatever-it-was for himself as well, then handed the pot back to Hayley. She mimicked his actions with a huge grin on her face and poured out a third cup, which she then shoved abruptly toward her teddy bear. Sherlock was forced to grab the saucer with his unoccupied hand before it could spill all over his trousers. Hayley nudged at the cup until he'd relented to holding it in place at approximately the level of the bear's forelegs.

"You gotta stick your pinkie up like this when you drink so it's fancier." In demonstration Hayley took a sip of her beverage with her smallest finger extended comically out like a flag. Sherlock bit back a small laugh and, deciding it couldn't hurt anything to play along for the moment, obligingly copied her.

"This is grapefruit juice," he realised as he took a small sip. Hayley shot him an offended look from her place across the table.

"Nuh uh, it's _tea_ ," she asserted haughtily. "Cause we're having a tea party."

"No... this is definitely grapefruit juice." Sherlock took another sip and scrunched his face up a bit for the sour taste. "It's not even very good grapefruit juice."

Hayley opened her mouth to retort, but was distracted by the sound of a car pulling up at the other end of the house. Sherlock looked up and was vaguely mortified to see Mrs. Hudson climbing out of her vehicle. The elderly woman was busy patting out the wrinkles in her floral-patterned dress as she walked up the path to her front door.

"Hi, Mrs. Hudson!" Hayley exclaimed cheerfully. In reply Mrs. Hudson looked up toward the porch with a smile... then stopped in her tracks and put a hand to her mouth in a poor attempt to cover a burst of laughter. Sherlock could feel his cheeks flushing. Here he was sat in a deck chair in his bare feet, hair fluffed up like a bloody sheep, holding a pink cup of juice with one hand while the other supported a flower-shaped saucer for the benefit of a frilly-dressed bear. _Oh lord please don't let her have a camera handy._

Mrs. Hudson started walking again, still chuckling, and fixed an indulgent smile on the both of them. "Having a tea party, dears?"

"It's a grapefruit juice party," Sherlock corrected in an embarrassed mumble. He coughed slightly as he set aside his garish pink cup along with the bear's. Across the table Hayley huffed indignantly at him.

"It's _tea_ ," she snapped, then turned to Mrs. Hudson instead. "Sherlock's bad at pretending."

"Oh I'm sure he just needs practise is all," Mrs. Hudson assured the little girl. She stifled another laugh at Sherlock's aggrieved look and, reaching their spot on the porch, bent down to pick up Hayley's miniature teapot. "How about we fill this with something more proper, hm?"

"Yeah!" Hayley exclaimed happily.

"I'll, er... just go back to-" Sherlock started, making to rise from his seat, but Mrs. Hudson cut him off with a sharp tut.

"We'll be having none of that, young man. Did you eat your breakfast?"

"Um," Sherlock paused... couldn't exactly _lie_ , not when the tray was still clearly full back in her guest bedroom...

"Of course not," Mrs. Hudson answered for him with a small exasperated shake of her head. "Well, come on then, both of you inside. We'll cook up a nice proper meal together."

"Cooking!" Hayley echoed in an excited shout. She sprang up from her chair, grabbed Sherlock's hand and proceeded to drag him bodily off toward the front door. Once again he just barely managed to avoid landing face-first on the wooden deck - the girl's centre of gravity was far lower than his and apparently perfectly calibrated to pull him right off balance.

"Be polite, please, Hayley!" Mrs. Hudson admonished from behind them. "You'll have poor Sherlock's arm off if you tug any harder."

"Oh." Hayley glanced over her shoulder, meeting Sherlock's annoyed glare, and flashed him a sheepish grin. He extricated his hand from her viselike grip and straightened up into a more normal standing position, only to have her latch onto the side of his trousers instead.

Mrs. Hudson just chuckled again at their subsequent silent bickering over what exactly constituted not being an obnoxious leech of a child _(why did she feel a need to be grabbing him at all times!?)_ and herded them both into the house ahead of her.

Sherlock soon found himself set with the task of slicing fruit in the cool morning atmosphere of the Hudsons' kitchen. Beside him Hayley was enthusiastically stirring a bowl full of pancake batter. Mrs. Hudson had bustled off to retrieve something or other - related to Hayley's reading lesson, he'd gathered, but she hadn't really explained beyond that.

"Is Mrs. Hudson teaching you how to read too?" Hayley piped up. She was seconds away from knocking her bowl of mix over with the frenzied intensity of her stirring - Sherlock reached over to steady it before it could topple off the counter.

"I already know how to read." He frowned as she continued with the manic insanity of what she apparently thought 'stirring' looked like. "Stop flailing like a lunatic, you're going to spill batter all over."

Hayley stopped her activity and looked up at him with a confused expression. A second later she turned back to her bowl and began to stir the batter again in excruciatingly slow, careful circles.

"Is she teaching you math, then?" she continued. Her tongue had poked out from between her teeth as she apparently concentrated all her efforts on stirring properly.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and went back to slicing up an apple. "No."

"French?"

"I'm fluent in French."

Hayley was starting to look confused. "Why're you here if she's not teaching you stuff?"

"I have no idea," Sherlock admitted in a vaguely irritated monotone. He stopped slicing apples for a moment to sneeze into the crook of his elbow, grimacing for the accompanying painful spasm of his abdomen. Ugh... the scratchy discomfort from earlier had progressed into a full-blown sore throat now. Of all the rotten bloody luck, he just _had_ to come down with a cold on top of everything else.

"Daddy says sneezing is when the devil leaves your body," Hayley informed him cheerfully. He fixed her with a disgruntled expression.

"You're going to grow up to be one of those psychotic evangelical tragedies of a human being, aren't you?"

Hayley just blinked up at him, bewildered. After a pause she seemed to give up on deciphering what he'd said and just answered the bits she understood. "I'm gonna be a zoo keeper."

Sherlock snorted to himself. "Clearly."

"What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

"I'm already grown up," Sherlock replied blandly, moving on to slicing up an orange now. Hayley seemed to have completely forgotten about stirring her pancake batter and was just holding onto the wooden spoon like some sort of boat rudder. She looked him up and down again.

"So what are you then?"

Sherlock paused. "I'm..." he trailed off, looking down at her. What _was_ he...? A chemist, once, but he'd abandoned that path ages ago. A drug addict...? Not anymore, not if he could help it. A traveller, then... a vagrant. Some sort of ghostlike, wasted potential of genius.

... nothing.

With a shake of his head he swallowed down another cough and turned his attention back to the fruit on the cutting board. "... I don't know."

Hayley gave him a miffed look. "You can't _not know_ what you are, that's dumb."

" _You're_ dumb," Sherlock retorted childishly. Hayley stuck her tongue out at him and in a fit of pique he retaliated in kind.

"Oh honestly! Am I going to have to separate you two?" Mrs. Hudson's amused voice drifted into the kitchen behind them. She'd finally returned bearing a small stack of books and a tape recorder in her arms, which she deposited on the patterned cloth of her dining table.

"Sherlock started it!" Hayley cried, pointing an accusing finger at him.

"I did not, you liar," Sherlock snapped.

Mrs. Hudson just shook her head. "Go on and set the table, then. I'll finish up here."

She shooed her guests away from the counters with a stack of cutlery, and Sherlock was reduced to the task of trying to get Hayley to stop rearranging the forks and knives so every place ended up with multiples of the same implement. Soon enough everything was in order, and Mrs. Hudson presented each of them with a plate of blueberry pancakes, sliced fruit, and cottage cheese. Hayley dug into her meal like a starving waif while Sherlock merely picked at his with a fork. He _really_ wasn't hungry.

"Sherlock, dear, if you don't start eating properly I'm going to have to ask Harold to bring home one of those feeding tube contraptions."

Sherlock looked up from where he'd been prodding at a pancake. "I'm fine."

"Nuh uh you're super skinny!" Hayley chimed in. Sherlock shot a glare her way.

"No one asked you."

" _Behave_ , both of you," Mrs. Hudson said sternly. Sherlock and Hayley both shut their mouths and snapped their gazes toward her, only to be met with a fond smile. "Let's just have a nice meal and then get on with our reading lesson, shall we?"

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," Hayley chirped, returning to her food.

"Why would I need a reading le-" Sherlock started, but Mrs. Hudson raised her eyebrows in clear disapproval and he cut himself off. With a frown he looked back down at his breakfast, huffed a bit, and speared a square of pancake. Well... at the very least it tasted better than his usual bin-scrounged fare.

Twenty minutes later their plates had all been cleared away and Sherlock was trapped at the table with Mrs. Hudson and an overenthusiastic little girl as they got to the business of choosing a book to read. Stifling the intermittent coughs of his irritated throat was beginning to get the better of him, much to his displeasure. If there was one thing he hated more than being ill it was _letting on_ that he was ill - but try as he might the bruised diaphragm and sore jaw were making it difficult to be subtle.

"Oh Sherlock, are you not feeling well?" Mrs. Hudson asked with a pitying pat of his hand. He'd been right in the middle of trying not to cough and ended up jerking his limb away from her in an instinctual startle reflex - forcing back the accompanying vicious glare took an enormous amount of willpower. Ugh, was there a polite way to ask someone not to touch you unexpectedly?

"It's nothing," he answered a bit more snappishly than he'd intended. Across the table Hayley grinned; the metal wires on her teeth made her face seem oddly mechanical.

"He's got a _cold!_ " she crowed happily. "Daddy says-"

"That a benign viral infection indicates some sort of demonic possession by Satan, thank you for the scintillating insight," Sherlock sniped before she could finish her sentence. Mrs. Hudson shot him a sharp look and he slouched down in his seat in vague chastisement.

Hayley didn't seem the least bit perturbed, however. "No it's cause you didn't pray enough."

Mrs. Hudson smiled sweetly _(though the expression seemed a tad forced)_ at the girl before turning back to Sherlock. She'd just opened her mouth to say something when a shrill ringing cut through the quiet background noise of the house.

"Oh! That'll be the phone," the elderly woman exclaimed. She rose from her chair and paused to wag a finger at them. "You two _behave yourselves_."

With that she disappeared into the other room.

"What book do you wanna read?" Hayley piped up immediately. "I like the one about the fish."

Sherlock bit out a sigh and let himself slide further down in his chair. God, he was beginning to get a nicotine headache. Shouldn't have wasted half that cigarette. He covered his eyes with a hand and tried not to dwell on the looming prospect of having a smoke while his throat felt like sandpaper. "I don't care."

_"Oh my lord, is he alright!?"_

Sherlock and Hayley's heads both snapped up at the sound of Mrs. Hudson's exclamation. They glanced back at each other in tandem before Hayley jumped up from her seat to rush toward her tutor. Sherlock bounded after her and caught the girl around the midsection before she could burst screeching in on what sounded like a fairly serious conversation.

"Lemme go!" Hayley smacked ineffectually at his arm.

Sherlock shushed her with an annoyed scowl and carefully poked his head round the edge of the doorframe. In the hall Mrs. Hudson was standing with the phone pressed tight to her ear, covering her mouth with a teary-eyed expression. Hayley twisted around in Sherlock's grip and peered around the corner as well.

"What's going on?" she asked in a whisper.

Sherlock furrowed his brows as details picked themselves stark white out of the kind old woman's appearance. _Posture, facial expression, stricken tears... touching her wedding ring._

"Something's happened to her husband."

**««**


	4. Chapter 4

**««**

"It'll just be a few hours, dear, they said he'd likely be free to leave by noon."

"But I don't think-"

"Oh hush, honestly. You'll be fine."

"But-"

Mrs. Hudson turned, purse in one hand and keys in the other, and fixed Sherlock with a stern, no-nonsense expression. He snapped his mouth shut on instinct, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his borrowed shirt as he stood awkwardly in the hallway with Hayley clinging to the back of his trousers.

"Sherlock, my husband's just been assaulted. I've been asked to go see him, and I'm not about to bring a little girl into a hospital where there's all manner of diseases lurking about. Not to mention you're coming down with something and we hardly need to be spreading a cold round to all those sickly patients, now do we?"

"You're planning to leave _someone else's child_ in the care of a twenty year old vagrant you just met _yesterday!_ " Sherlock's voice came out a bit of a scandalised yelp, overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all. "That's insane! I could be a... a murderer, or something! I could be mad! I _am_ mad!"

"You're not _mad_ ," Mrs. Hudson replied with a half roll of her eyes. "You're a very responsible young man and I've utmost faith in you." Sherlock opened and shut his mouth a few times, trying to come up with a coherent response besides _you're bleeding mental_ , while Mrs. Hudson bent down to address the girl hiding half-behind his legs. "Now Hayley, dear, be a good girl for Sherlock, won't you? I'll only be gone a few hours. You can show him round the house, hm? Read a few of your books?"

Hayley nodded shyly. "Okay Mrs. Hudson."

"I- I could just leave!" Sherlock tried, his last ditch effort to get the woman to see sense. Because _honestly_ this was _not_ an acceptable solution to Hayley's parents being unavailable - trusting a bloody _homeless ex-junkie_ with criminal tendencies and a forged passport to look after a little girl was a horrendous act of negligence. "I could walk out right now and no one would ever even know I was here! She'd be all alone!"

"You won't, though." Snatching up a light crochet jumper _(the hell did she need one for in this weather?)_ the elderly woman bustled off toward the front door. Nothing Sherlock said could seem to penetrate past her single-minded mission to see her husband. "Ring the hospital if you have any trouble, dears, the number's by the phone! I'll just be a tick!"

And with that she was gone.

Sherlock remained standing in the hall, expression caught between sheer outrage and a sort of creeping horror. Oh no oh god he'd been left alone with a _child_ and it was entirely _his responsibility_ to make sure she didn't die or injure herself or burn the place down and no no _no no no_ who ever said he was cut out for something like this!?

"I hope Mr. Hudson's not hurt too bad." Hayley's chirping voice cut into the short stretch of silence which had settled over them in the wake of Mrs. Hudson's departure. Sherlock barely heard her, still staring at the door. The girl looked up to her erstwhile caretaker with a frown and tugged on his trousers to get his attention. "Hey, what's _ass-all-ted_ mean anyways?"

"It means someone attacked him," Sherlock explained vaguely. He glanced down at the little girl, then back up to the door, brought an arm up to his face to smother a cough and grimaced. Oh _hell_ talk about a bloody pile-up of shit... alright, but, well... fuck, hang on... first things first, right? But then no no no oh god he didn't even _know_ what should come first! He'd never looked after a child in his life! This was completely mad!

Dropping his arm Sherlock bit nervously at his lip, scrubbed fingers through tangled hair, then looked down to Hayley. She was blinking up at him with a curious, slightly confused expression on her round little face.

"Is that bad, then?" she asked when it became clear he wasn't going to elaborate on the definition. "Cause you look kinda freaked out."

"I- what?" Sherlock realised his hands were currently tangled up in his hair like a nutter. Self-consciously he shifted them to his trouser pockets instead, tried to appear less like he was about to have a panic attack over something so stupid as being entrusted with the care of a young person. This _wasn't_ a big deal. It wasn't. _Really._ "I'm not _freaked ou-_ why would I be... ugh, no. I'm... fine. Everything's fine."

"If you're scared you can just say so, you know." Hayley gave him a concerned look and patted his thigh in a childish gesture of comfort. "Daddy says it's important to let the demons out when they get inside your brains and the only way they can get out is if you tell somebody they're there. So you should just say so if you're scared."

Sherlock scrunched up his face in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. "Are you suggesting _emotions_ are caused by...? Ugh, no, don't answer that. Your entire sense of reason's been tainted by parental psychosis."

Hayley didn't react to his words beyond a slightly befuddled smile, apparently her default response whenever he said something she couldn't quite process. And, hrm... but she _was_ rather resilient in the face of most anything he said to her, wasn't she? Maybe it would be easiest just to speak to her as a fellow adult, then... treat her as if she were an accomplice in this whole absurd situation? Was that even _allowed?_ Probably not. Should try regardless, though, as it was just about the only way he could think of to find a second opinion on what to bloody _do_ with her because damned if he had any clue whatsoever.

"Alright... look," he started. As he spoke he finally took a step away from the spot he'd been rooted to for the last five minutes, cast about for a direction to move in. Where...? Kitchen, back to the kitchen. That was closest. "I'm not... freaked out, or _scared_ , or whatever, because there's nothing to be scared of and that would be moronic." Reaching the dining table he all but shoved the girl into the same seat she'd occupied for breakfast, then took the chair across from her.

"But you're acting super freaky," Hayley pointed out with a frown.

"I am not- that's-" Sherlock huffed, ruffled his hair again, then leant his elbows on the table and rubbed at his forehead. Ugh, christ, he was really going to need a cigarette before too long. "That's _anxiety._ And I am justifiably _anxious_ because I've never been called upon to look after a child before, I have no idea what to do, and I don't feel it was wise of Mrs. Hudson to put her trust in me so quickly."

Hayley just gave him a confused look. "You're scared 'cause you don't know how to take care of kids?"

"Yes!" Sherlock threw his hands up. Thank god, she actually seemed to be able to understand a portion of what was said to her. "There's this whole mess of _rules_ and things concerning how you're supposed to interact with children but I don't know any of them and it's not like I can just copy what my _parents_ did when I was your age because that would be horrendous and my brother and I spent most of our time together having _science_ lectures which would probably classify as Satanic under your mad little indoctrinated mental paradigm so that's out too and I just..." He huffed and dropped his arms to his sides, fixing Hayley with an aggrieved look. "I'm _really_ not the right person for this."

Hayley scrunched her face up and drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "Well... usually when I have babysitters and stuff they just play games with me. So I guess do that?"

Sherlock shook his head and grimaced around another cough. " _Children's_ games, I'm guessing? Which I've never played. No. _God_ this is ridiculous."

"You never...?" Hayley echoed with a bewildered look. "You mean like tag and hopscotch and stuff? You never played those?"

"Of course not." Sherlock shoved a hand through his hair again, then leant partially forwards as he tried to elaborate. How much of his intended meaning was actually managing to get through Hayley's juvenile little mental processor was a complete mystery, but he didn't much care. So long as she got _some_ of it, that was good enough. "Look, I had a... a _less than ideal_ , shall we say, childhood. I didn't have regular contact with anyone my own age until I was sent to boarding school at thirteen and no one there would have been caught dead playing _tag_ , or conkers or whatever it is normal children do to waste time between classes. Not with me at any rate."

Hayley's face was now a comical picture of exaggerated pity. "What about hide-an-go-seek?"

"Hide and what?" Sherlock asked, blinking. Had he ever...? No. Read about it, though, maybe... that was the one where you had to find people, right?

Across from him Hayley's mouth had dropped open in shock, appalled by his apparent lack of knowledge. Then abruptly her expression shifted into a look of staunch determination. Before Sherlock could say anything else she'd hopped out of her chair, grabbed him by the hand and threw her weight backwards in an ineffectual attempt to drag him from his seat.

"If you don't know how to play hide-an-go-seek then I gotta teach ya 'cause _everyone_ knows how." For some reason this whole issue seemed to be a point of real distress for the girl. Sherlock furrowed his brows and reluctantly allowed her to tug him out of his seat.

"I don't think it's wise to play a game involving _hiding_ when I haven't learnt the layout of the house," he pointed out quite reasonably. Hayley, however, didn't appear to be listening to him - she was far too busy rattling off the rules of hide-and-go-seek over her shoulder as she herded him towards a far wall.

"Okay so you gotta be the seeker first so you can see how to hide good and it's super easy you just cover your face so you can't see nothin' and then you count to a hundred but _no peeking_ and if you don't know how to count to a hundred you can just count to ten ten times and when you're done counting you gotta come find my hiding spot!"

She shoved him face-first into a bare corner of the kitchen. He looked down at her with a flustered, slightly irritated look of exasperation - when the hell had he even indicated that playing a game was the appropriate-? He'd just been asking for her opinion on what to do! But beside him the little girl had put her hands on her hips and was now _glaring_ with such venom that Sherlock relented to pressing his face into his forearm against the floral pattern of the wallpaper without daring to object further. Sod it, fine, just avoid sending her into a tantrum.

"If you manage to get yourself injured-" Sherlock started, but Hayley cut over him.

"Count to a hundred!" she ordered sternly. The shift in volume of her voice indicated she'd already darted off toward the hallway. "And no one's allowed to go outside so don't even think about it mister!"

"Why would I-"

_"A hundred!"_

Sherlock bit out an annoyed sigh but reluctantly did as he was told. It was this or continue to sit around fretting about not having any idea what to do with children, after all... might as well go along with things.

Counting turned out to be rather unbearably boring, so to keep himself on-task he began switching languages at every tenth digit. Finally some few minutes later he'd at last gotten to '... _dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć_ _..._ _sto_ _'_ and with an irritated huff shoved himself away from the wall. Well _that_ had been utterly tedious. Game was certainly off to a brilliant start, then. What had she said to do next?

Oh, right... apparently now he had to find her. Of course. Couldn't be too difficult.

He turned to lean his back on the wall he'd been counting against _(stifling another cough, ugh his throat might as well be sandpaper)_ and scanned the room around him. Scuff marks from her shoes on the floor, arranged in such a way to suggest she'd sprinted for the hall... he made his way in that direction. Carpet fibres misaligned just _there_ , another few to the right, the decorative cloth on that table sported a slight wrinkle where it hadn't before. She'd tried hiding under the vase arrangement, then, and decided it was too open. Moved on to...? Ah, second door on the left - smudge marks on the handle, hadn't been shut at the same time as the others judging by the divots on the carpet. Had to have gone through there.

Opening that door turned out to lead to a small office-like area Sherlock hadn't seen before. Several framed documents lined the walls above a bookshelf to his right, stacked high with medical texts. A desk dominated the centre of the room with a modestly-sized window to the right open to receive a shaft of morning sunlight. This was clearly Harold's study.

Sherlock paused in the doorway and scanned the area. Very slight shift of the leather rolling chair behind Harold's desk... obviously Hayley had curled up on the seat to stop her legs being visible in the gap between the desk's back and the floor. She was hidden underneath the desktop, then. This wasn't a very challenging game.

Biting back a sigh Sherlock made his way over to the desk. He'd _meant_ to yank the chair out and tell Hayley her idea of hiding was complete rubbish... but before he could do so he found himself distracted by the papers strewn haphazardly over the glossed wood of Harold's workspace. A small pile of documents; patient case studies, it seemed, though none of them recent. The latest was from the mid-nineties. And every one of them had "outcome: deceased" written in the subject header. That was interesting. Odd, perhaps? What had Harold been researching?

Slight snickering coming from below; Hayley evidently thought he'd failed to notice her, perhaps under the impression her clever hiding spot had left him lost and confused. Not bloody likely. Sherlock's face settled into an annoyed frown - focus still trained on the papers strewn across the desktop - and with a free hand he shoved the chair back to reveal the little girl curled up in the seat like a cat.

"Hey!" she cried indignantly. "No fair, that's cheating cause you heard me laugh!"

"I already knew you were there." Sherlock's voice had gone a bit sidetracked as he flipped carefully through the case files, being sure not to move any too far from their original positions. They all seemed to be write-ups of patients who'd had adverse reactions to a particular brand of chemotherapy drug. In red ink Harold had gone through and circled all the dosages mentioned, scrawled notes alongside with comments like _'reasonable? check double',_ and a scattering of other illegible fragments hovered around all the passages detailing the progress and possible causes of fatal side-effects.

Probably all to be expected on the desk of an oncologist, cancer treatment research. But then, strangely... a large section in nearly all the papers had been left free of written commentary; the suggestions for alternative treatments were all conspicuously skipped over. And off to the side, a list of pharmaceutical vendors...

"What're you looking at?"

Sherlock blinked over to Hayley. Abruptly he realised he was standing round snooping through some doctor's paperwork for no good reason - probably not the best of behaviours to be role-modelling to a child. He dropped everything back into the exact places he'd found them and took a step away from the table to thwart himself getting distracted by anything else. Honestly, what was with his brain latching on to anything that looked even remotely like a pattern? Fuck's sake he didn't even have a working knowledge of cancer treatments - this was not only none of his business, it was nigh-incomprehensible besides. Idiot.

"Papers. Nothing important." He flipped a hand dismissively, then quirked a questioning brow down at Hayley as something occurred to him. "I've won the game, then?"

Hayley scoffed. "Uh, _no._ I still gotta find _you_ , dummy. Then whoever found the other faster is the winner."

"I found you in less than two minutes, you're not likely to do better than that," Sherlock pointed out, but Hayley was already pushing at his legs to get him to walk towards the hall again.

"Don't be a butt-face!" she snapped. Sherlock obligingly let her herd him back to the kitchen. Once there she positioned herself against the same wall he'd been stood by earlier and shot him a stern look. "Okay so now _I'm_ gonna count and you hide and _don't_ go outside, remember!"

"Alright, alright." Sherlock raised his hands placatingly, rolling his eyes as Hayley shoved her face into her hands against the wall and started counting. Ugh, right then... hiding... in an effort to amuse a child foisted on him by an old lady whom he'd met in the street less than a day ago. Obviously. Good lord this whole situation was absurd.

Hayley was taking her sweet time just getting to ten so Sherlock leisurely ambled out into the hall, considered his options. Well, the room he'd been in this morning had had a closet, hadn't it? He supposed he could... stand in there, or something. It was the only place he could think of right off hand and he didn't much feel like dashing about the house looking for another likely spot. To Joshua's room, then.

The covered meal Mrs. Hudson had left for him still sat on the bedside table next to the rumpled pile of blankets he'd left, so he appropriated another few slices of fruit from the tray to nibble on in hopes they'd take some of the edge off his sore throat. Coughing would doubtless give away his location, after all. Not like he cared, of course... _(though damned if a little girl was going to beat him at such a stupidly simple game - he was four times her age he'd bloody well better win.)_ Opening the sliding closet door without it squeaking proved to be a bit of a trick, but he managed. Closed the mirrored panels behind him, stood in the darkness therein leaning on the far wall with a slice of apple still half-out his mouth. Beginning to feel a bit of a pillock, really. Nothing for it but to wait though... at least it didn't smell too badly of moth balls in here.

His opponent, predictably, was taking bloody _forever_ to figure out where he'd gone. Thankfully she was loud enough in her frenzied dashing about that one could deduce her location in the house just from her footfalls, so Sherlock felt relatively safe letting her wander about where she would. Not like it was his problem if she destroyed any breakable objects, anyway. Idly he picked at a bit of peeling wallpaper next to his hand and wondered how long he'd have to remain cramped up in this stupid closet before Hayley either found him or admitted defeat.

The piece of plaster he'd been picking at shifted, pulled free from the wall with a soft _shuff_ noise and he startled, thinking he'd actually torn the entire section off. _(Bloody hell he hadn't been pulling_ that _hard!)_ But when he looked down it was to find instead that a square section of the wall _itself_ had actually come loose in his hand - some sort of jerry-rigged trap door? The plaster was cut in straight corners all the way through, as if by a knife or box cutter, and behind it...

Intrigued, Sherlock crouched down to peer into the little alcove he'd inadvertently uncovered. Pitch-dark inside, but with the scant bit of sunlight filtering through the cracks in the closet door he could almost make out a bundle of objects. A hidden stash? This had been their nephew's room, hadn't it? Contraband, then? Interesting. Fascinating, even. He grabbed the bundle and squinted at it in the half-light. Couldn't see a thing. Too dark...

 _Get out of the closet, then, you idiot._ Oh, right.

"Hey! You're supposed to stay hidden!" Hayley exclaimed indignantly as Sherlock re-emerged into the bedroom. She'd been on all fours searching under the bed, apparently not having considered that his height would make it impossible for him to fit under there, and was now glaring up at him like he'd committed some horrid atrocity by breaking cover.

"You've lost anyway, it's been longer than two minutes." As he spoke he moved over to the bed and dropped the little bundle onto it. The string holding the makeshift pouch together came loose and a small assortment of items along with a rolled up sheaf of papers tumbled over the quilt.

"Where'd you get that?" Hayley asked curiously.

Sherlock picked up a small photograph of a dog. "It was hidden in the wall."

"Neat!"

He let her fiddle with the odd little handful of plastic cars and dinosaurs from the collection while he unfurled the stack of papers. Rolled fairly tightly, some yellowing at the edges - clearly they'd been behind the plaster for quite some time.

The topmost item was a note:

 _Aunty H - if you've found this I'm sorry. I know you said I should stop prying into this stuff, but I can't just ignore it. Someone's gotta do something. He needs to be stopped. Even if it means I-_ (the next few words had been hastily scribbled through in black ink by a shaking hand) -... _I know he'll try to convince you I'm crazy again. And maybe I am a little. But please, aunty, I know it's hard but you have to believe me this time. I've got proof now. If he finds out I got this stuff I'm dead but I'll make as many copies as I can before he notices. The police won't listen, but someone needs to know. Someone has to..._

The rest of the missive had been torn off, the paper crumpled and worn. Sherlock flipped wide-eyed to the next page and found a thick stack of what looked like official medical documents - purchase orders, dosages, nurse logs... and buried at the very bottom a summary of Harold Hudson's malpractice insurance pricing. He scanned that page in particular, noting the number of patient fatalities. Was that high, for an oncologist? How was one to know what constituted a normal death rate? The insurance premiums, maybe... abnormally raised? Damn, couldn't tell without a baseline to draw from...

"Did Josh leave this stuff here?" Hayley piped up, cutting into his thoughts. Sherlock glanced down to find her pretending to ramp a toy car off the rear end of a dinosaur.

"Apparently." Besides the troubling sheaf of papers there didn't seem to be much else of interest in the stash. Half a dozen small toys, a short glass pipe _(still smelt of marijuana - he grabbed that and tucked it back out of sight before Hayley could do something stupid like lick it)_ , a few photographs of school friends and a newspaper clipping of a smiling couple with a dog. Presumably all normal hidden treasures of a teenage boy.

Hayley's expression had fallen as she continued to push the toy car around. "I miss Josh... he was really nice. He used to read books with me and do all the monster voices."

"How long ago did he leave?" Sherlock asked as he flipped back to the nurse logs, trying to decipher the hasty notes scrawled into the margins. Mrs. Hudson had already mentioned something about the boy disappearing last August, he recalled vaguely - it would be interesting to see if their stories matched, though.

Hayley shrugged. "I dunno. A long time ago... like a year I guess? He said he'd call me when he got to Michigan but he never did."

This fact seemed to dampen her spirits considerably. Without warning she dropped the car she'd been holding onto the quilt and looked up to Sherlock with a slight quiver to her lip. "Do... do you think he doesn't like me anymore?"

She sniffed forcefully, eyes welling up - oh christ _she was going to cry._ Sherlock baulked and cast about frantically for something to say that might mollify her. Think, think... she wanted to know Joshua hadn't forgotten her, right? Why hadn't the man called, then? Had to be some explanation, something that would...

"He didn't mean to abandon you," Sherlock realised in a flash of insight as he shifted the papers in his hands, caught sight of the note on top. "He's probably been killed."

Hayley fixed him with a horrified expression, choked on a strangled little gasp, and Sherlock's eyes widened in response his own words. _Shit_ , wait, that... hadn't come out right. Why had he-? Argh, no, try again you daft idiot!

"That is, er..." He brandished the papers in his hand, trying to force back the wince for his own utter lack of tact. "These documents indicate he was collecting sensitive information, so it would make the most sense to assume he's been... erm. Well either that or I suppose he may have gone into hiding? But that's generally quite tricky to pull off without significant resources to fabricate a new identity, so..."

"J-Josh isn't _dead_!" Hayley screeched, her expression gone furious. "Why would you-!? H-he went to Michigan like he said he was gonna!"

"Do you have any proof of that?" Sherlock asked before he could think not to. Would be quite enlightening to find out the answer, actually... perhaps Mrs. Hudson had a phone number on hand? Could it be cross-referenced? How had they been informed of his whereabouts, anyway, before losing contact? Or _had_ they lost touch, even? Perhaps Mrs. Hudson had spoken to him recently? And what about Harold? If this was all in relation to some malfeasance perpetrated by the doctor, then he could be...

"You're one of Satan's _liars_!" Out of nowhere Hayley hurled a toy car at his head, sobbing, then bolted out of the room in tears. Sherlock was taken off-guard enough to forget to dodge - he yelped in surprise as a plastic wheel hit him square in the face, clapped a hand over his nose with a pained grimace. Oh fucking _fuck,_ why had she-!? Right on the sodding _bone_ , christ, if it was bleeding he'd-... Oh no, hell, where'd she gone!?

"Hayley, hang on... wait!" Sherlock dropped the sheaf of papers onto the bed and turned to chase after her. A coughing fit stopped him mid-step, however, forcing an arm round his spasming abdomen as he doubled over in pain. Argh, _fuck_ , just ignore it, ignore it... find the girl. Injuries weren't important.

Down the end of the hall he finally stumbled into was the front entryway of the house - a screen mesh with a heavier wooden panel for security, veranda and garden beyond. Mrs. Hudson hadn't bothered to lock either of them when she left.

Both doors had been flung open, now, swinging on their hinges.

_Shit._

_**««** _


	5. Chapter 5

**««**

He bolted out into the garden and almost immediately realised he'd forgotten his shoes.

No time to retrieve them, however, and they were still coated in mud besides. Instead he simply vaulted off the porch into the soft grass and cast his gaze about for any clues as to where Hayley'd gone. Crushed grass in the shape of small footprints leading off towards the tree with the wooden swing. Said swing swaying in an anomalous figure-eight pattern, as if someone had shimmied up one of the ropes... ah, she was in the tree. Hadn't gone far, then, thank hell.

Cautiously, his heart hammering in his chest for some ridiculous reason, Sherlock made his way across the still-damp grass. Worst-case scenarios flitted through his mind - Hayley deciding to jump to escape pursuit, breaking a bone or hitting her head, the parents blaming him for killing their child... he wasn't sure why exactly he _cared_ about any of that, since after all he could always just skip town, but it was alarming regardless. Mostly the mental imagery of a kid with her skull smashed open. Unsettling.

Shoving such useless thoughts out of his mind he came to the base of the tree and peered up into sun-speckled branches.

Hayley appeared to have deftly hidden herself somewhere up amongst the foliage. Sherlock couldn't so much as make out a shadow of where she might be. He grimaced, lifting an arm to stifle a cough. With his physical health in the state it was in he _really_ didn't want to have to climb a bloody tree. Perhaps he could coax her down instead? Make her do all the work? Worth a shot.

"Hayley!" he called, but of course found himself met with no answer. He rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck, casting his gaze about for anything that might plausibly help him. There was nothing. Fucking hell, how did he even keep getting himself into these ridiculous situations? Trying to talk a little psychotic American girl down from a tree, christ. With a short huff (and a wince for the effect that action had on his injured abdomen) he looked back to the mass of leaves overhead.

"I, er... I'm... sorry?" he said hesitantly. _Apologising_ , really? When was the last time he'd willingly done _that?_ Still he grit his teeth and soldiered on. "I didn't mean... well, that is, I shouldn't have said things so... bluntly, I suppose? I'm... not always the most tactful of... well, but then to be fair it _was_ the most logical conclusion so really I... erm."

He cut himself off and in a moment of complete loss bit his lower lip, an expression of baffled helplessness. Good lord, he _really_ wasn't much good at this, was he? Best quit while he was vaguely ahead. Maybe he'd done well enough to assuage her anyway...?

From above came the faint sound of someone hiccoughing. Ah, no, Hayley was still crying, then. He frowned and shifted his weight uncomfortably.

After a long moment of deliberation Sherlock finally sighed to himself. He took a second to size up the tree - straight trunk, mostly bare with few lower handholds... but there was a branch around ten foot up he could probably reach if he jumped. Would doubtless be quite painful in his current state... but then, sod it, he'd been through worse.

A bracing breath through his nose _(leading to a poorly-stifled cough - god he hated being ill)_ , then in a burst of action he launched himself towards the trunk. Bare feet made for much better traction on the bark than he'd otherwise have had and so it was a simple matter to run a few steps up the side to catch hold of the low-hanging branch.

Of course the next part of the whole process would be hauling himself up to a place where he could start to properly climb, which would require rather extensive use of his abdominal muscles, which would be fucking hell on earth. Wasn't going to let himself be thwarted by a few stupid bruises, though. He grit his teeth against the stabbing protests of his stomach, pushed the pain to the back of his mind to be steadfastly ignored, and forced himself upwards.

A second or so later he'd gotten up on the branch, grabbed the one above it, and with a few more decidedly uncomfortable metres upwards finally found his miserable little charge.

She was sat curled up in the fork of two branches close to the tree's trunk. Obviously been up this tree many times before, knew exactly where the best spot to sit was. Sherlock, meanwhile, was left to hastily glance around looking for a limb that might plausibly hold his weight.

A few inches to Hayley's right and perhaps a foot below her he spotted one, and gingerly perched himself as close to the base as possible so he could lean on the trunk and catch his breath from the uncommonly-difficult climb. _Not_ doing that again anytime soon if he could help it. In fact, not doing _anything_ for as long as he could possibly manage, upset six year olds be damned. Should have stayed in fucking bed this morning, god's sake.

Silence stretched between them for several moments. Sherlock, of course, had no plans to break it. Hayley sniffled a bit and buried her head in her arms, then finally spoke.

"Josh showed me how to climb the rope to get up here," she mumbled, her voice a quiet, sad little muffle. Sherlock glanced up from where he'd had his aching head pressed against the tree and frowned at her.

"Er... good on him," he replied blankly. Wasn't quite sure what conveying that information was supposed to accomplish. What did it matter to Sherlock how she learned to scale a tree? Before he could say anything more on the topic however the little girl was glaring over at him, face tearstained, a sudden snap of childish rage clear in her expression.

"When Gramma died, Daddy said it was because we didn't pray enough for her," she informed him, tone startlingly cold for such a young child. "Josh can't be dead cause I prayed for him _every day_. I prayed a lot! He's alive 'cause God wouldn't let him get killed. Saying he's dead means you're a liar and you're evil."

Sherlock opened his mouth, brows raising in bewilderment, but quickly shut it again. His gaze flitted elsewhere for an instant as he strove to come up with an appropriate response to that jumble of madness. Christ, what was he supposed to say to refute something patently insane?

Finally he gave up and, looking back to the girl, just shrugged.

"I have no idea how to respond to that," he admitted in complete honesty.

Predictably Hayley's eyes seemed to well up a bit, her glare becoming more unsteady with unshed tears. "Say you're sorry for lying!" she insisted angrily. "Say you take it back and Josh isn't dead!"

"I..." Sherlock trailed off, grimacing a bit, and rubbed at a sudden stabbing ache in his temple. Nicotine withdrawal. If he'd just thought to bring his cigarettes... ah, but! A spark of memory lit up in his brain at the thought - had he ever put them back in the bedroom? Hastily he patted down his pockets. Relief flooded like a tidal wave through overwrought neurons the instant he felt the hard corner of a familiar cardboard pack under thin fabric.

He shifted his body so he was sitting straddled across the branch, his back to the tree's trunk where previously he'd been leaning against it sideways, and with a little tricky maneuvering managed to complete the whole process of lighting a fag without dropping anything or falling. Hayley was watching him the whole time, her face a cross between frustration and curiosity.

"What's that?" she snapped, trying but mostly failing to sound stern. Sherlock coughed into his elbow and grimaced for the burn of his throat, then propped the cig in his mouth to re-adjust how he was sitting.

"A cigarette," he answered, then promptly remembered he wasn't exactly supposed to be introducing children to narcotics and added, "Er, they're bad for you, don't... copy me or whatever it is impressionable children do."

"If they're bad for you why are you eating one?" Hayley countered dubiously. Sherlock exhaled, blowing the smoke as far away from her general vicinity as he could manage, and rolled his eyes.

"I'm not eating it, I'm smoking it, and if I explain any further I'll doubtless get shouted at by someone so kindly stop asking."

Hayley didn't seem to have a response for that. A short silence passed between them. Sherlock smoked a good quarter of his cig and internally vowed to never go more than two hours between smokes again. Blessed nicotine had smoothed over the jagged edges of illness and injury to leave him feeling more or less like his normal self again. That a simple chemical could have such power... remarkable, truly. A wonder of creation.

Beside him Hayley had drawn her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her lower legs. She kept darting little smouldering glares Sherlock's direction like she expected him to say something. After about the third or fourth round of this nonsense Sherlock finally frowned at her.

"What?" he asked, flicking the ash off his cigarette to be swept away by the morning breeze. Hayley huffed unhappily.

"You didn't take it back. You're supposed to say you're a liar and you're sorry," she spat somewhat bitterly. Sherlock resisted the urge to roll his eyes in disgust. Instead he took a drag, continued to contemplate the effect of acrid tar filtering through lung tissue, the swirling sensation of nicotine round his skull caused by direct manipulation of neural structures. Fascinating. As he let his thoughts meander his gaze strayed in a similar idle manner off over the Hudson's well-manicured lawn.

"Would an apology really change anything?" he asked after a long pause. "I wouldn't even mean it, you know. I'll just say whatever I think might stop you crying."

Hayley seemed a little confused by his words. She knit her brow indecisively, then shook her head. "It... if you don't say it then God's gonna be mad at you and you'll go to hell."

Sherlock smirked in a small laugh. "Fairly sure I've been there already."

"No you haven't," Hayley countered in an offended tone. "Hell's where sinners go when they die. You can't be in hell until you're dead."

"Now which of us is the liar?" Sherlock muttered, watching the smoke off his dwindling fag dissipate into a thousand microscopic specks of air pollution. Before Hayley could come up with some stupid reply he huffed a flat sigh and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Look, I already said I was sorry for being insensitive. I don't feel a need to be coerced into any more ridiculous apologies."

"But-" Hayley started, but Sherlock interrupted her by suddenly standing and hoisting himself up onto a branch overhead. He'd spotted a likely-looking series of thicker limbs bunched up close to the tree's trunk above them and wanted to see if he could reach a spot where the leaves were sparse enough to get a decent view.

Shuffling behind him made him turn just in time to spot Hayley attempting, for whatever absurd reason, to follow him. She wasn't nearly tall enough to reach the branch he'd grabbed and was now pouting up at him like a pathetic little urchin on a street corner. His cigarette was as good as out anyway so he stubbed the ember on a patch of rough bark and slipped the spent filter into his trouser pocket. After a brief deliberation he reached down a hand for the girl below him.

"Come on, then," he said with an unimpressed look, though perhaps tinged with a hint of amusement. Hayley eyed him dubiously. A second later though and she'd grabbed on with both hands. It took a bit of a heft, which did not at all help Sherlock's general pain level, but between the two of them they managed to get her up on the highest branch they could both plausibly fit onto. Once there she nervously balanced herself by leaning back into Sherlock's abdomen, sitting directly in front of him on the gnarled wood.

Complaining about the uninvited close proximity was sorely tempting, but Sherlock swiftly decided it wasn't worth bothering over. He'd been the one who'd offered to help her get up here in the first place, after all, so he really had no one but himself to blame. And besides which it was just some silly little girl. Not exactly a threat. It was far more productive to spend one's energy taking in the view, anyway. Closer to the tree's top the leaves were spaced much more sparsely, and from this particular vantage point one could see clear out over the Hudson's sprawling suburban neighbourhood to the city beyond.

"It's pretty," Hayley mumbled. She sounded a bit unsure, preoccupied - perhaps warring with her own lingering sense of indignation, the fear of being up so high, something Sherlock had done or said to upset her again. Any of a hundred childish things. Who knew, really. Sherlock just hummed in vague agreement as he set about committing the surrounding topography to memory. If he could get a sense for how the neighbourhood was arranged he might be able to get back to the city without needing to beg for a lift.

"Are you gonna leave?"

Sherlock blinked, distracted from the road he'd been trying to trace out to a main street. He glanced down at Hayley, who'd by now ensconced herself securely against his chest. She was staring questioningly up at him.

"Not until Mrs Hudson gets back," he replied, thinking that was an obtusely obvious question to ask. Even for Hayley. Of _course_ he'd be trapped here with her until the adult of the house returned.

Hayley's expression seemed for some reason to go uncommonly sad. "When she gets back you're gonna leave, though."

"Well I'm hardly going to be welcome for more than a night or so," he answered with a shrug. His gaze flitted back upwards to study the far-off buildings of Tallahassee. "I've enough money to get out of Florida, I think. Buy a bus ticket to some other state. I suppose a freight car would be cheaper, though, if I could find an unguarded rail yard. Bit more dangerous that way but safety's not really important."

"You should stay," Hayley mumbled. Sherlock furrowed his brows and looked down to the girl again. She was pressing her back firmly into his chest, clutching the branch with both hands, and seemed to be staring morosely out at the view ahead of them. Sherlock glanced up, then back down to her, then frowned.

"You want me to..." he trailed off, shook his head in utter confusion. "No, hang on - ten minutes ago you were crying because of me. I'm an evil liar, remember?"

Hayley sniffed and rubbed at her face with one hand, expression crumpling. Sherlock felt a flash of alarm. Oh bloody hell she was going to burst into tears again, wasn't she? And halfway up a tree this time... without really meaning to he shifted an arm to pin her lightly against his chest. Wary of the girl falling to her death should she be stupid enough to repeat her insane attack-and-retreat strategy from earlier. It occurred to him only belatedly that the action might be construed as one of comfort - Hayley had immediately clutched onto his arm and buried her face against his shoulder. Gah, no, that was _not_ what he'd-

"Er... I wasn't... I hadn't meant this to be a _hug_ , actually, I was just trying to make sure you wouldn't fall if you did something stupid," he said awkwardly, feeling this point very much needed to be explained. Hayley didn't seem to hear him. Mercifully, though, she also didn't seem to be crying. She was just... sitting there, snuggling into him like an oversized stuffed bear. Sherlock swallowed nervously. His brain had chosen that moment to remind him, quite unhelpfully, that this was the longest bout of unbroken contact he'd had with another human being since leaving Eric.

The resultant pang of loneliness through his chest was both starkly unpleasant and entirely unwelcome. He hunched his shoulders a bit and glanced elsewhere, doing everything in his power to beat down the familiar sense of isolation beginning to creep up his spine. The inexorable knowledge that the entirety of the species lived interconnected by spider-silk strands of social connection; all but him, standing alone at the untethered edge.

Usually it was enough to remind himself that he'd willingly separated from the lot of them. Just a load of useless morons anyway. He'd cut ties for the mutual good of all involved parties.

Moments like this, though.

It was difficult, that was the simple truth of it. A cruel reminder of those few he'd been able to fool into liking him enough to offer brief companionship. Friendly human contact. Something he'd sworn off months ago and, frankly, something he didn't particularly appreciate being reminded of the existence of. Better to never touch anyone ever again than to have to constantly cut out these pitiful social instincts and nagging desire for company.

There wasn't much he could do about any of his human-contact-related issues at the moment, however. Shoving Hayley away would only result in her breaking her neck on the grass below. And for all that Sherlock may have been a complete, remorseless arse, he drew the line quite firmly at ever harming a child. Imitation of Siger Holmes was not a path he'd suffer treading.

Hayley sniffled again and snuggled further into his shirt, making him wince and determinedly glance elsewhere.

"You're nice," the girl muttered, breaking the minutes-long silence between them. "Like Josh was."

"I'm not nice," Sherlock objected somewhat exasperatedly. Hayley didn't respond, and rather than continue to argue such an obvious point he cast about for a change of subject. "We should really get out of this bloody tree..."

Noise from the street below suddenly caught his attention and he trailed off to look for the source. A vehicle slowing down in the road. Mrs Hudson was home already? She'd said a few hours, not... oh, but it was too large to be her car anyway. Who, then?

Keeping careful hold of Hayley he leant forward to shove a sprig of leaves out of the way in an effort to see the kerb more clearly. Down below them a nondescript brown van was pulling into the Hudson's driveway. Emblazoned on the side of the vehicle was the logo for a pest control service.

"Did Mrs Hudson say anything about exterminators coming round?" he asked quietly, frowning at the two men who were now climbing out of the cab. They were both heavily muscle-bound, though one was much thinner than the other, and appeared to be of hispanic descent. The uniforms they wore were obviously ill-fitting and seemed to be causing the both of them some discomfort. Clearly not clothes they wore on a regular basis. Whomever they were they certainly weren't professionals of any sort.

"... no?" Hayley answered. She'd finally taken her face away from Sherlock's shirt and was now also looking at the two men, though with a far less wary eye than Sherlock. Together they watched as the strangers approached the door. The shorter one was griping at his companion.

_"Más vale que sea la casa correcta, idiota gorda."_

Sherlock leant so far forward on his branch trying to hear that he very nearly overbalanced, causing Hayley to squeak in alarm and grab onto his shirt. Distractedly he muttered a quiet _sorry_ and steadied them by gripping a nearby branch with his free arm, still focussed on the muffled conversation taking place below. Spanish wasn't a particularly difficult language for him, similar enough to English and French to pick up quickly, but he'd never had much of an ear for the various dialects. Especially not those of the Americas. And though he'd been learning some of the nuances of Caribbean Spanish over his last few weeks of wandering southwards he'd somehow not heard this form spoken before.

"What accent is that? Cuban?" he mumbled, mostly to himself, though of course with their current proximity to each other Hayley overheard him.

"They're dirty wetbacks," she answered promptly. Sherlock blinked, distracted from one of the men now fiddling with the Hudson's front door, and looked sharply down at her.

"They're _what?_ "

Hayley shrugged, sniffed and rubbed at her still-damp eyes. "That's what Daddy calls people who talk Spanish like Mexicans do."

"Mexican! Of course!" Sherlock whispered excitedly. Trying to keep his voice down, since he had no clue what the 'exterminators' might really be here for, but the thrill of figuring something out made it hard to remember to be quiet. Discovering even more information wouldn't be too difficult, of course, just had to... without further thought he swung his leg over the branch he'd been perched on and made to climb down, unintentionally leaving Hayley stranded up on their high perch.

"Hey! I can't get down!" the girl hissed. Apparently she'd caught on they were meant to be quiet now and was whispering just as Sherlock had done. Sherlock paused, half hanging off a branch just below, and looked up at her. Ah, hell... she'd not be able to reach any other handholds without his help. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Hudson's mysterious home intruders, frowning in anticipation of finding out who exactly they were, then impatiently regarded Hayley again. What would be the fastest way to...?

"Here, just..." he gestured vaguely towards his shoulders, reaching out for her hand. Hayley seemed to get the hint and gingerly lowered herself from her branch, only to slip at the last minute and find herself saved by Sherlock grabbing her tightly round the midsection. He glared slightly - _christ sake be more careful!_ \- but Hayley had already scrabbled around and latched onto him like a monkey. With a bit of awkward shuffling he managed to get her in a position where he could climb down without dislodging the death-grip she now had round his shoulders.

Less than a minute later he dropped silently _(if somewhat painfully - adding the full weight of a little girl on top of his own body mass wasn't exactly doing his bruised abdominal muscles any favours)_ on the soft grass. They'd come down specifically on the far side of the tree from the door, and he leant sideways to glance around the trunk. The so-called exterminators were nowhere in sight, presumably having disappeared into the house.

"What are they doing?" Hayley asked curiously. Sherlock hadn't the slightest, of course, and shrugged in response.

"No idea. Doubtless something nefarious, though. The whole exterminator van thing's really a bit cliché."

Hayley's only reply to that was a blank stare, prompting Sherlock to sigh and grudgingly amend his language. The undertone of withering scorn in his demeanour was clear as day, however. No matter if she was a young child - why couldn't people just have a bit of _vocabulary?_ First it was Eric not knowing the meaning of half the bloody dictionary and now this, ugh.

"Probably doing something bad," he drawled flatly. "Because pretending to be working in someone's house is a stupid trick that lots of robbers use."

"Ohhh," Hayley replied, eyes wide. Sherlock scoffed a bit and began making his way towards the house. Belatedly he realised Hayley was trailing along behind him. Stopping in place he frowned, looked back at her, then to the house. He'd meant to sneak in and eavesdrop on whatever the intruders were doing, but that would be difficult to pull off with a young girl in tow. And he didn't trust the little nutter not to dash off after him the second she heard a loud noise, orders to remain behind the tree be damned. Needed to come up with some alternative...

Less than a second later he perked up as an idea came to him. Ah, yes. That would work wonderfully. He reached down to grab Hayley's hand.

"Huh?" she asked, tugging her arm slightly as if to free herself. Sherlock just held firm and dragged her towards the Hudson's front door.

"Shut up and go along with whatever I do," he hissed. Hayley nodded, though still looked terribly confused.

Upon reaching the porch they could already hear evidence of someone moving around inside. Muffled cursing, two men arguing in low voices, the bangs and rattles of furniture being moved around. Sherlock glanced down to Hayley one last time, then, steeling himself, raised his fist and knocked smartly on the door.

Instantly all movement inside the house ceased. A brief, unintelligible argument broke out (Sherlock listening closely to pick up any words, but unable to do so) and then the sound of footsteps down the hall. With a startlingly quick motion the door opened to reveal a very pissed-off looking young man with dark olive skin glaring out at them. It was the thinner of the two burglars.

"Get lost, gringo, family's not home!" he shouted in Sherlock's direction. As Sherlock had hoped would happen, however, the man made no move to draw a weapon or threaten physical violence - his dark eyes had flicked noticeably towards Hayley for a split-second. By the man's expression Sherlock deduced he most likely had children of his own. Wouldn't risk exposing a little girl to a bloody fight scene. Excellent.

Bolstered by this minor success, Sherlock grinned, doing his best to make himself look a daft ponce.

"Oh, hi! Sorry for interrupting you," he greeted cheerfully. Beside him he felt Hayley shift in a surprised movement, most likely in response to his having suddenly switched to an upbeat American accent. "Mrs Hudson called a little bit ago and asked me and my sister to water her houseplants for her. Guess she forgot to do it before she left this morning?" He shrugged and kept his airheaded smile in place. Inwardly his brain had already gone off dissecting the short stretch of dialogue, berating him for errors, picking out all the tiny failures. _D's instead of T's, idiot, christ, and you mucked up half the bloody vowels again._

Luckily the British-tainted muddle of an accent didn't seem to matter too much, as the Mexican man appeared to lack enough of an ear for English to catch the inconsistent pronunciations. Instead of suspicion his expression had set into a look of sheer aggravation.

"Come back later!" he snapped. Sherlock winced apologetically and tried to act as much like a nervous teenager as possible.

"Um, yeah, I would... but my sister's got to get to school soon. Can we just... er..." He hesitated, struggling to come up with an American-sounding phrase. A million snippets of overheard conversation flitted through his mind as foreign terminology quickly cobbled itself together. "... come in real quick?" _(Was that right? Sounded stupid. No time to dwell on it just keep talking.)_ "To water them, I mean. It'll only take a few minutes."

He grimaced slightly, hoping his brief stumble had come off as a simple lack of self-confidence rather than someone making an obvious mess of American vernacular. A brief moment of indecision on the Mexican's part made Sherlock's hand unconsciously grip Hayley's a bit tighter, to which she responded by sidling closer to his leg.

Perhaps this hadn't actually been the best of ideas, Sherlock reluctantly admitted to himself. Just boldly knocking on the door like an idiot. Who knew what these two men wanted, after all? Simple burglary, one assumed. That's what Sherlock had thought, anyway. And his plan had thus been to get inside the house by whatever means, lock himself and Hayley in Harold's study and ring the police. Easy enough. But if their motive was something else, something more serious... _what_ else, though? What could a couple of rough-looking Mexican men want with an elderly couple? Had to be thievery, no other option made sense.

All through Sherlock's internal deliberation the other man had apparently been considering his options as well. Finally with an extremely put-upon sigh he stepped to the side and gestured for them to enter.

"Water the fucking plants then, chamaco. Be quick though, eh? We got shit we're doing in here."

"Thanks! It'll just be a mome- er, minute." Grinning like a complete ponce Sherlock sidled his way past the dour-faced man, Hayley in tow. He'd meant to make a beeline for the study - the only room which he knew for certain had both a lock and a phone - but as they passed the open entryway leading to the sitting room Sherlock instead stopped short. The fatter of the two burglars was sitting on the floor, carefully affixing a square, smallish bundle of plastic and wires to the underside of a chair he'd upended. A remote-like device rested next to his leg.

A device Sherlock had seen before.

Some ten or twelve years back Father had for some unfathomable reason decided it vitally important to teach his children how to operate various firearms. Perhaps in the assumption that at least one of them would follow in his footsteps as an active duty spy. It was a lesson which, predictably, had gone rather poorly - Mycroft had deemed the very concept of armed combat beneath him and flatly refused to participate. This left Sherlock, around eight at the time and thus thoroughly incapable of objecting to anything he was told to do, nervously holding a pistol, trying to remember all the instructions despite a distracting cloud of anxiety induced by Siger's piercing gaze drilling into the back of his skull.

It wasn't the gun lessons themselves that were relevant to the current situation, however. No, it had been the room before that, the one containing safety equipment. They'd been doing all this in some sort of classified military compound. One of Siger's old stations, clearly not a facility generally open to the public, probably granted access through shady connections. The room wherein all the earmuffs and vests used for soldiers' shooting practise were stored had also (quite alarmingly, in hindsight) housed a massive stash of plastic explosives. Stacks of C4, casual as you please, just tucked right up next to the spare hazard signage.

 _Somewhat of a contradiction,_ Mycroft had jokingly pointed out. Siger had chuckled. Sherlock had been too busy wishing he were literally anywhere else to react properly. Instead he'd fallen to staring fixedly at a row of square plastic things on a shelf next to him. Olive green with a rough texture, buttons and an antenna, obviously electronic.

He'd not really been looking at them, of course. Just setting his gaze somewhere neutral whilst he struggled to drown out the angry buzz of static in his head. Jumbled up feelings. Dread for how horrifically loud the sound of a bullet exploding from the hollow tube of a gun would no doubt be. How he'd not be allowed to flinch or be hesitant about it if he wanted to avoid utter disdain from Father. Whether or not Mycroft would notice how scared he was, and if he'd care or if he'd start in on another lecture about how emotional weaknesses cripple the mind.

Siger had at some point spotted Sherlock's apparent interest in the neatly arranged boxes and, perhaps assuming the fixed stare meant the boy wanted to know what they were, gamely explained their use. Remote detonators. Electronically set off explosives from a distance. Terribly useful.

Like most things that happened in the presence of Father, Sherlock remembered the detonators uncommonly well. Well enough to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the plastic device sitting next to the overweight Mexican man's leg was absolutely identical to them. Right down to the colour of the casing. In such a drastically different context to the setting of his memories the sight was downright eerie.

Abruptly the man looked up from his work to wave Sherlock away, scowling and cursing in Spanish. Down the hall the other criminal had started toward them with an annoyed glare. Sherlock swallowed and resumed his earlier path down the hall, Hayley stumbling along behind him.

"Slow down!" the girl whinged. Sherlock did no such thing. He marched straight down the hall, past the wall-mounted phone, and in a quick motion that might have been a mere shift of his arm palmed the pad of notepaper off the small table. Probably didn't need to be so furtive about it, really, but the Mexican bloke was still watching them and Sherlock didn't want to give him any more reason to be suspicious than he already had. The fact that the man hadn't asked about the fact that neither Sherlock nor Hayley were currently wearing shoes was a miracle in itself. Best not push their luck.

They reached Harold's study within a few seconds and Sherlock flashed the man down the hall a quick, bright, completely moronic grin before shoving Hayley in ahead of him and slamming the door. He engaged the lock as quietly as possible (wouldn't want the criminals to notice he'd barricaded them out), then turned and leant for a moment with his back on the thin wood panelling. For some unfathomable reason he found his limbs had begun to tremble very slightly. The tremor left his already-overworked body feeling distressingly weak and helpless.

"You're scared again?" Hayley piped up. Sherlock startled a bit, realising he'd been staring wide-eyed at the carpet, and shook his head. It was a jerky, truncated sort of motion. With a grimace he grabbed at his hair and pushed off the door towards the desk where Harold's phone was.

"Scared? No, of course not... why would I... t-there's nothing to be scared of," he asserted, ignoring the way his fist compulsively clenched around the pad of paper in his hand and how his voice quavered the tiniest bit. He shook his head firmly, _get it together, moron,_ and resolutely dropped the pad onto the desk. Mrs Hudson had jotted down a number on it - hospital line, so she could be reached in case of emergency. Sherlock was _fairly_ certain this situation qualified.

A secretary answered on the second ring and he was forced to resort to using Harold's name to locate the couple, as he had no idea what Mrs Hudson's first name was. Thankfully it only took a minute or so of being on hold before the kindly voice of the elderly woman greeted him from the other end of the line.

"Hello? Sherlock, dear, is everything alright?"

She sounded concerned. Damned well she'd better be, _christ._

"Yes, hi," Sherlock replied, his voice flatly unamused. Much calmer now, thank god, no longer tremulous. At least he could still count on himself to maintain his trademark bland sarcasm even in the face of possible death by firey explosion. "There's a couple of Mexican blokes wiring your house up with C4."

Jarringly, Mrs Hudson just laughed. "Oh good gracious, dear, this really isn't the appropriate time for jokes, is it? A clever one though, I'll give you that." She hummed a little, sounding as if she were smiling, and then just carried on speaking. "Harold's just about finished in the ER, by the way. Had to get stitches! Half a dozen, should've seen the-"

Sherlock grit his teeth, glanced back toward the door where Hayley was hovering, then rolled his eyes to the ceiling in frustration as Mrs Hudson went on about the _bloody_ stitches. He stifled a cough and turned his attention back to the phone. Before Mrs Hudson could transition over to some other inane topic he interrupted her.

" _Mrs Hudson_ ," he bit out angrily. The woman stopped mid-word with a little startled _'oh'_. Sherlock's free hand migrated upwards to tug fretfully at his hair. "I am currently locked in a small room with a six year old-"

"I'm seven!" Hayley interrupted indignantly. Sherlock let his hand slide down over his face with a frustrated growl.

"- a _seven year old_ ," he amended. "And I've just seen a rather large block of what was unmistakably a plastic explosive being affixed to your husband's armchair. I'm _really_ not in the mood to listen to you natter on about fuck-all."

"Oh," Mrs Hudson replied. There was a long pause, during which Sherlock could hear the woman's clothing shift, and then she let out a rather unexpectedly shaky breath. "Oh, my... you are serious, then?"

"Of course I'm _bloody-!_ "

He cut off at the sound of someone pounding angrily on the door, a burst of Spanish which Sherlock could only decipher enough of to identify as incredibly pissed off. His eyes widened and he went back to the phone.

"I'll do what I can to incapacitate them if I have to but I swear to god if you don't tell me what the _fuck_ you and Harold know about this I'll-" His words left off abruptly once again as his attention was usurped by the doorknob rattling. Sherlock whipped his head towards it, quickly hung up the phone behind him without even bothering to listen to whatever Mrs Hudson was saying. Much more pressing matters at hand.

Striding past a wide-eyed Hayley he practically leapt to fling open the door, the daft smile once again firmly in place.

"Oh wow, hi! Was that locked? I'm _so_ sorry, my sister must have been fiddling with it!"

Accent was worse than ever, but that wouldn't be an issue for long. The older man was glaring hatefully and shot a sneer towards the interior of Harold's study. His dark gaze settled on the single, lonely potted fern tucked into a corner.

"You fucking take ten minutes to water one goddamned plant?" he snapped furiously. Suddenly his black-brown eyes widened. Sherlock didn't even need to follow his line of sight to tell he'd spotted the phone on the desk. The man's lips parted in a snarl.

"Did you use that phone!?" he snapped. Pushing past Sherlock with a rough shove he stalked quickly to the object in question and ripped the cord out the back of it. He dropped the frayed end onto the carpet and rounded on Sherlock. At long last the man finally caught sight of their complete lack of shoes, his eyes narrowing in a mixture of confusion and suspicion. Sherlock maintained the false act of bewildered teenage fear regardless. Suspicions weren't solid. They could still get out of this.

"Oy, gringo... why you got no shoes?" the man asked slowly, dubiously. Sherlock forced himself to look befuddled.

"What on earth are you on about?"

The Mexican man tilted his head slightly, brows knitted. Perhaps catching the abrupt shift in accent - Sherlock had completely forgotten to do an American one that time. _(Idiot... oh, well, it hardly mattered now.)_ He stalked closer, narrowing the distance between them to a scant metre, and glared from their feet to their faces and back again.

"You walkin' around barefoot to school?"

"What? No, of course not. That would be ridiculous," Sherlock replied airily. His accent wasn't even remotely American now. "If you'd just take a closer look I'm sure you'd see we've clearly got-"

 _Hah!_ The man had stupidly leant forward to comply with Sherlock's request, putting his collar within dangerously close range. Without warning Sherlock grabbed a fistful of starched fabric and in a flash of movement used his weight to unbalance his adversary from the top whilst hooking a leg round his shin, sweeping his footing out from under him. The result was one very startled Mexican slamming hard onto the floor.

A secondary result, unfortunately, was a rather displeased Sherlock _also_ slamming into the floor, as he'd badly overestimated his current available core abdominal strength. He grimaced against the throbbing pain of abused muscles, sensation of burning knives through his gut paired with a nice new bruise from his elbow smacking against hard carpet. No time to cry about it, though. Get back in the game, keep the upper hand.

Luckily the criminal had landed square on his back, Sherlock's weight having slammed into his stomach, and was now effectively winded. His retaliation was little more than a few weak slaps between gasps. Sherlock straightened up to find himself more or less straddling the bloke. Awkward, yes, but also quite convenient. Made landing a solid blow much easier. Dead aim for the temple, then, hard enough to snap the head sideways, and...

" _Fuck_ ," Sherlock swore, panting as he shook out the fist he'd just smashed willingly into the side of a rock-hard skull. A few seconds' wait proved the man was out cold, though, so at least there was that. Still breathing hard Sherlock swallowed, winced, shoved himself sideways off his fallen assailant's legs. Gingerly he attempted to get to his feet without stumbling or blacking out. Argh his fucking _stomach_ , christ. Like the sodding muscles were tearing in two. Shouldn't have yanked the bastard to the floor like that.

One of his arms had unconsciously curled around the injured area and Sherlock found himself leaning heavily on a nearby wall for support, grimacing as he tried to catch his breath. God, this whole week just kept getting better and better, didn't it?

"Did... you... I... is he _dead_?"

He glanced up to find Hayley standing wide-eyed by the half-open door. The girl was looking from the unconscious man, to Sherlock, then back again with a look of horrified fascination on her face. By the looks of things she was having trouble deciding whether to condemn or idolise Sherlock's actions. Exasperated, he let his head droop slightly, then lifted it again and forced himself to stop leaning on the wall. Walk over to Harold's desk. Not difficult. Ignore the stabs of pain.

"Not dead, just knocked out," he assured his young companion, then quickly continued. "Help me find something to tie him up with. We've still got to deal with the other one." Even as he said this he grimaced in anticipation of what would likely turn out to be a very one-sided fight. The fallen man's accomplice was nearly twice Sherlock's size. Even uninjured he'd have had doubts about his chances. As things were, well... odds weren't in his favour.

Nothing for it, though. Had to secure the house _somehow_. And with the room's sole phone put out of commission the police were hardly an option. Not unless they made it to another room unmolested. Not to mention that, barring the one in the hall, Sherlock had no idea where another phone might be.

Hayley had managed to find a spare necktie in one of the drawers of Mr Hudson's desk and Sherlock reluctantly acknowledged the necessity of dragging their incapacitated intruder over to a piece of furniture they could tie him to. The process was every bit as painful as he'd expected it to be. He ended up sat on the floor next to the desk afterwards, curled up with his arms on his knees miserably cradling his head whilst he instructed Hayley on how to bind a man's wrists securely to a table leg. He had no clue how good she was with following directions and quite frankly didn't much care at the moment. Self-pity was taking extreme precedence right now.

Fucking hell, the worsening head cold and the bruises coupled with what he was beginning to suspect might actually be a torn abdominal muscle... nothing in the whole bloody world now but stabbing, burning _pain_. Maybe the second thug would take mercy and just shoot him.

"Is this right?" Hayley asked. Sherlock reluctantly raised his head and squinted at the knot she'd tied. He reached out and tugged part of it, was vaguely surprised when it held fast.

"Decent," he ceded. No need to inflate the girl's ego. With an unenthusiastic huff of a sigh he pushed himself to his feet. Physical discomfort had to be ignored for now, more important things to focus on. At least his brief respite curled up like a pathetic child next to the desk had given him time to come up with a plan.

"Alright," he said to Hayley, who reacted to the stern tone of his voice by straightening up like a tiny soldier and adopting a comically serious expression. Despite everything Sherlock couldn't help a very slight twinge of amusement. He quickly shook his head and carried on.

"Here's what we're going to do..."

**««**


	6. Chapter 6

**««**

"Now?"

"No, not yet."

"... _now?_ "

"For god's sake!" Sherlock snapped, looking up. Hayley was blinking innocently at him. "Could you be patient for _five bloody seconds_? I'm nearly finished."

Mercifully the girl shut her mouth. Sherlock huffed and turned his attention back to the task at hand. Not a beat later, however, he growled to himself at the sound of the little moron talking again.

"It's been five seconds," the girl pointed out in her obnoxious chirp of a voice. Sherlock grit his teeth.

"Hayley I swear to _christ_ if you weren't a small child I'd-" He cut himself off. Ugh, no. Threats of violence weren't warranted. Just ignore her, focus on more important matters. Taking a bracing breath through his nose (or as bracing as one could get when every inhale caused a whipfire stab of pain), he looped the last length of telephone cord into a solid knot, gave it a sharp tug and was relieved when it held fast.

Hayley stared at him for a long moment. Then, not ten bloody seconds later, took a breath as if to speak. Sherlock growled and cut over her before the airheaded girl could ask the same sodding question for the dozenth time.

" _No_ , not yet. Just shut up until I tell you otherwise," he snapped. Hayley abruptly closed her mouth but didn't look too chastised by the angry tone. Instead she was watching Sherlock with interest as he took several steps backwards to find the right position for their set-up to work. Once he'd settled on a spot just out of sight of the door frame Hayley's expression turned to one of impatient excitement. His loyal assistant, ready and _(over-)_ willing to participate. Lovely.

Sherlock glanced around one last time, checking that everything was in place. Nothing jumped out at him as obviously wrong. With a short sigh he rubbed at his forehead and stifled another cough. Well. Best get things over with. It was do or die... with the latter option being significantly more likely.

"... alright. Now. Go," he grumbled reluctantly. Hayley's face lit up in sheer delight. She took a deep, ridiculously over-dramatic breath, and then bloody _screamed_ at the top of her lungs.

Sherlock winced as the shrill screech sliced a bolt of pain through his skull. God's _sake_ how could one little girl be so loud? Of course a piercing shriek had been the ultimate goal, so he should probably have been grateful of her being up to the task, but christ... mercifully Hayley ran out of breath within a few seconds. In the subsequent ringing silence she looked to Sherlock with a wide grin, eager for further orders. All Sherlock could do in response was meet her eyes and shrug - he had no way of knowing if the plan had worked. They'd just to have wait and see if their target took the bait.

Luckily they didn't have to sit around for long. The sound of heavy trundling footfalls soon echoed down the hall, drawn by Hayley's distress signal. Sherlock's attention shot over to the door, instantly on high alert as he signalled to Hayley to get on with the next bit. Hopefully she hadn't forgotten her part already.

The girl seemed to have a better memory than one might be tempted to assume. That or her enthusiasm for being asked to make an obnoxious amount of noise had temporarily boosted her powers of recollection. Either way she followed instructions to the letter. Sherlock nodded, and right on cue her eyes welled up, expression crumpling as she burst into a flood of crocodile tears.

" _Daddy!_ " she wailed pitifully. Sherlock winced again at the shrill tone but kept his eyes on the door. Had to get the timing right - if he fucked this up they'd both be in serious danger.

_"¿Qué diablos está pasando aquí?"_

Someone speaking loudly in oddly-accented Spanish, sounded as if the man was right outside. A hand appeared on the side of the slightly-ajar door and pulled it the rest of the way open to reveal the portly intruder's stout frame. His face pulled into a puzzled expression at the sight of Hayley apparently standing in the middle of an empty room sobbing to herself.

 _"Niña, ¿qué pasa? ¿Estás herida?"_ the man asked carefully. Wanting to know what was wrong, if she was hurt. His tone of voice carried that note of obvious concern that betrayed this man as having a family as well. Weakness of parenthood, making otherwise reasonable people abandon all caution over anything vaguely resembling their offspring. Wonderfully useful where exploitable.

The man began to move into the room and Sherlock narrowed his eyes. Just a little more...

Finally the man took the fateful last step over the door's threshold - passing, unbeknownst to him, directly over the loose phone cable hidden in the carpet. Sherlock yanked back on the length of cord, drawing the line taut, and smirked in triumph when the man's left shin caught at exactly the right moment. Their quarry yelped in surprise as he crashed face-first into the unforgiving floorboards.

Instantly both Sherlock and Hayley were on the attack. Sherlock, grip still tight on the phone cord, shot forward and seized one of their fallen victim's hands before the man could get an arm under to right himself. Hayley threw herself bodily over the head, using her weight to both block vision and impede lifting the shoulders.

Unfortunately the bloke turned out to be rather strong (and surprisingly mobile for having his skull pinned to the floor by a fair-sized child) and his wildly flailing limbs were proving difficult to keep hold of. Sherlock lost his grip on one and found a hand shoved hard into his face. Eyes, _agh_ \- he was going for the bloody _eyes_. Desperately he tried to yank his face out of reach whilst still trying to wrangle control of the man's wrists. A finger strayed near enough his mouth and he bit it, hard. There was a sharp yelp as the man instinctively drew his hand back towards his chest, where Sherlock quickly looped a bit of wire over it and yanked the pre-tied slip-knot tight, pulling both arms together in a tight bind.

Panting hard - the pain in his stomach had reached 'unbearable' several minutes back - he did as thorough a job as possible lashing the intruder securely to the door hinges where the cable end was fastened. Once satisfied of the integrity of his makeshift restraints Sherlock grabbed hold of Hayley and stood up, lifting her bodily away from the man. Best get them both out of range quickly, didn't fancy having to deal with a young child taking a boot to the face.

Of course a second later Sherlock was forced to drop the girl, having lost all core stability as his injured muscle chose that moment to spasm. He stumbled back into the desk and slid down the back of it to a slouched sitting position where he instinctively curled around the injury like an infant. Agh, fuck fuck _fuck_ he _really_ needed to stop with all this physical exertion before he ended up doing himself irreparable damage.

A short, insulted _'hrmph!'_ noise made him reluctantly look up, finding through one squinted eye that Hayley had picked herself up from her short tumble and was now giving him a stern look - apparently not at all pleased with being unexpectedly manhandled. Rather than attempt some sort of asinine lecture on the matter, however, she instead glanced over to their newly-captured prisoner. All trace of annoyance left her posture as she cocked her head like a puppy.

Sherlock glanced followed her line of sight and was absurdly relieved to see that the man appeared to still be held fast to the door frame. Telephone cord was resisting breakage admirably. The bloke was spouting obscenities in Spanish, nose bloodied from the fall, raging against his binds like a rabid beast. The sight did indeed look rather strange, all things considered. Worth staring at.

Whilst they both watched the man struggle Sherlock took a moment to catch his breath. Also a convenient moment for their prisoner to tire himself out. As the man's furious ravings began to wind down Hayley, for whatever ridiculous reason, moved back a few steps to sit leaning against the desk next to Sherlock. Without asking she shoved herself into the space between his right arm and his torso, cuddling up to his side as she continued to stare wide-eyed at their captive.

Sherlock frowned in annoyance but wasn't in any fit state to fight her over the unwelcome contact. He shifted his arm to rest more comfortably around her small shoulders instead and tried everything he could think of to put the issue of his now almost certainly torn abdominal muscle out of his mind. Knew he was capable of it, just had to remember... what had he done to push through these sorts of situations as a child? He'd had some sort of technique, surely. A mind game or something. Hadn't been seriously injured since going to live with Mycroft, though, and had spent the past four months determinedly avoiding any notion of his old life. Forgotten all the tactics he'd invented to mitigate pain...

"He seems sorta mad," Hayley remarked after a few seconds, interrupting Sherlock's thoughts. He opened one eye from the wince apparently frozen on his face to glance at the Mexican man. Sure enough the bastard had them both fixed with a hateful glare.

"Yeah, er... if that cord snaps I'm fairly sure he's going to try to kick our heads in," Sherlock replied, voice gone rather strained. "You'll probably want to run in that case."

Hayley frowned. "What about you?"

"Well, in the most dire scenario I suppose I'll have to heroically sacrifice myself for the good of your..." He paused, making a pained noise as he shifted his posture into something vaguely more upright. "... doubtless rich and fulfilling existence. Though of course you're likely going to grow up to be every bit as alarmingly bigoted as your father which will render my legacy somewhat disappointing."

"... what?" Hayley asked blankly. Sherlock shook his head.

"Nothing, I'm not explaining that. Do you know how to work a phone?"

Hayley looked a bit affronted. " _Duh,_ yeah. I'm not stupid."

"Debatable," Sherlock countered flatly. Before she could rebut he continued. "Go use the one in the hall to ring the police, then. Tell them there's been a break-in or something, I don't know. Whatever you think will get them here faster."

"How do I ring someone?" Hayley asked, looking suddenly confused. Sherlock growled in abject frustration.

"You _just said_ you knew how to use a phone!" he snapped angrily. Hayley scowled up at him.

"I do! I know how to _call_ people! I don't know how to ring!"

After a seconds' baffled glaring between them - how did any part of that sentence make sense...? Sherlock finally figured out the problem. Oh christ's sake.

"Ring means the same thing as call," he explained through gritted teeth. Hayley gave him a dubious look.

"Are you sure? Cause I don't think-"

"Fuck's sake, go and _call_ the police then!" he spat, shoving her away from him in hopes of getting her moving. "There's two tenuously-disabled criminals in the room and I'm half bloody dead, you moron!"

"Hmph! You don't gotta yell," Hayley retorted haughtily. Regardless of her snippy tone she still got up, dusted off her dress in a matter-of-fact way, and then flounced off into the hall.

Sherlock was left alone with one insensate burglar-slash-possible-terrorist-assassin-type-bloke (cumbersome, but he hardly had any way of knowing their official job description) and another tied to the door glaring daggers at him. He tried a bland smile at the conscious one. The man bared his teeth in rage and swore again.

Hm. Reacting to the situation with blind fury, not the stoic silence someone with a bit more training in hostage scenarios might have offered. Probably not a soldier, then. Excellent. More likely to give out sensitive information. Sherlock took as deep a breath as he could manage and stared the captive level in the eye.

 _"¿Por qué son los explosivos?"_ he asked in as decent an approximation of Spanish as he could figure, having not used the language in some time. Needed to know what the C4 was meant to accomplish, why they'd apparently wanted to kill the Hudsons. Asking their erstwhile prisoner was almost certainly the only chance he'd have of getting any satisfying answers out of this mess - didn't quite trust the Hudsons not to lie or sidestep the issue (assuming, of course, that they were directly involved - which by Mrs Hudson's reaction seemed likely), and of course the authorities wouldn't be willing to share. And Sherlock was _not_ leaving without answers. If there was one thing he hated most in the world it was not knowing why things happened. Especially when those things involved such blatant anomalies as bombs in kindly old peoples' houses.

The criminal was visibly startled - obviously not expecting some pale white kid with a funny accent to speak his language. And, sure enough, his answering question was distinctly uninspired.

_"¿Hablas español?"_

"Sort of," Sherlock answered, then realised that responding to a question of 'do you speak Spanish' with an English phrase was more than a bit stupid, and amended his phrasing. "Er... _sí."_ And then, because the man had just cocked his head at him rather than respond in any verbal manner, he irritably repeated his first question. _Explosives_ , god's sake. Focus.

At the sound of Sherlock's second attempt at Spanish the Mexican's face scrunched up in confusion, or perhaps disgust, making Sherlock frown. What? Had he got the phrasing wrong? Swapped out vocabulary? Was that why the idiot wasn't answering him?

 _"Tu acento es una mierda,"_ the man remarked flatly a few seconds later. Sherlock huffed in exasperation and rolled his eyes. Oh, god's sake. His accent was shit. Well the idiot speaking like a half-speed record could bloody well talk, couldn't he? Glass houses.

 _"¿Cómo supiste de los explosivos?"_ the man spoke up again after a pause. Apparently he'd decided to skip straight to the point, that being why on earth Sherlock knew about the explosives. Sherlock just shrugged.

"Recognised the detonator," he replied without thinking. Wait, bollocks - English again. Damn. He tilted his head a bit, brow knitting, and tried to think of how to say that in Spanish. All his brain was coming up with was _'reconnu le détonateur'_ , which was not helpful. Finally he just gave up.

"I don't know how to say that in Spanish," he admitted with a half-shrug. Quite pointlessly, it turned out, as the other man didn't seem to understand a word of English. Sherlock frowned and flapped a hand in a dismissive gesture. Body language to reinforce the meaning of his next sentence. _"No tienes que saber_. None of your business."

The man was staring at him, apparently trying to parse whatever of that utterance made sense. Which, by the look on his face, was very little. After a few silent seconds, however, during which Sherlock did his level best to look cold and intimidating and not at all like an injured twenty year old kid stuck several thousand miles from home, the man's expression seemed to shift into worried comprehension.

_"¿Avila te envió para probarnos?"_

Sherlock blinked. _Avila?_ What in blazes did that mea... oh, wait, no. Grammar. Most likely a name? Had Avila sent him to... test them... Sherlock tried to keep the look of bewilderment off his face as he cleared his throat and forced uncooperative muscles to let him sit up a bit straighter.

Alright, then, er... sure, whatever. If this idiot was going to assign him convenient identities it'd not exactly be wise to correct the misconception. Sherlock had no idea what might have prompted the man to think he was any sort of hired agent, though. Not like either of the intruders had been particularly difficult to disable - managed to take them both down despite a worsening injury and with the dubiously-helpful assistance of a young child. Perhaps he just happened to resemble someone the man had been expecting?

As Sherlock both puzzled over this and strove to cobble together a marginally-comprehensible reply, the man had begun to quietly mutter to himself.

_"Dijo que esto iba a ser fácil... puta mierda, no debimos confiar en él..."_

Sherlock tilted his head slightly, trying to parse the meaning. Before he could make much sense of it, however, the distant wail of police sirens caught his attention. Both he and his captive looked towards the far wall with identical spooked expressions. Sherlock glanced back to the man and tried not to dwell on the fact that he evidently had the exact same reaction to the sound of approaching law enforcement as a violent criminal.

But, then again, that reflex had been imprinted into Sherlock's psyche for very good reason - experience had taught him well that a police presence rarely heralded anything positive. And that pattern would be no different now, because it had just occurred to him in the space of about a microsecond that, oh right... he was technically an illegal alien. Emphasis on the _illegal_ bit. Shit.

And even if that weren't so pressing a problem, the authorities would no doubt make it a top priority to question the skinny wraith of a boy who'd somehow managed to incapacitate two dangerous men bare-handed. He very much doubted they'd believe him if he explained he'd learnt how to do that through a combination of library research and years of involuntary fighting experience. Interrogations, then, until they arrived at something they'd accept as the truth. And said interrogations would doubtless commence with a demand for identification. Which, even if he refused to give it, they'd easily be able to find back in Joshua's old bedroom. Everything he'd had in his pockets was still on the table there, right out in the open - UK passport, travel visa, wallet with two different driving licences, one of which was forged... and the other... well. But then _really_ it hadn't seemed like a good idea to destroy _every_ piece of legitimate identification he'd ever had, right? And it wasn't like he had anywhere else to keep it...

Sherlock grimaced at the revelation - oh good lord, he'd actually, seriously left a wallet with his _real driving licence_ in it on a bedside table in an unfamiliar house whilst on the run under an assumed identity with an expired visa. For _fuck's sake_. Could he honestly not go a single day without doing something unfathomably stupid?

As aggravating as that whole issue was there wasn't exactly time for self-flagellation over it, because _oh hell._ They'd do a background check on both aliases. They'd have to. And it was unthinkable that any inquiry concerning the name _'Sherlock William Scott Holmes'_ wouldn't set off several dozen high-level MI6 alerts. Not only would Sherlock have to deal with all the hassle of deportation under suspicion of being an international criminal, but he'd then find himself in immediate custody of the British Government upon arrival in London. No. _No_ no no, not acceptable.

Vaguely thankful for the speed of his mental processing - all of those thoughts had taken scarcely half a second - he shoved himself to his feet with the aid of a sudden shot of adrenaline. Right. Time to get the hell out of here. Unanswered questions be damned, he was _not_ going home. Not whilst Mycroft Holmes still controlled a significant portion of the government. The man's relentless surveillance had been the original catalyst, after all - the force driving Sherlock's need to find a chemical that could change how his brain functioned. Could make the cameras and the stalking agents seem okay, make it possible to ignore the sense of being watched, of never finding a moment alone, knowing his every action could be recorded and scrutinised.

A return to England would mean a return to the unending paranoia. Sherlock could either go completely mad under the stress or fall back on cocaine to cope. He already knew full-well which option he'd choose if given the slightest chance.

Granted, a surveillance-induced cocaine relapse might very well serve Mycroft right - finding himself personally responsible for his baby brother's eventual fatal overdose? Lovely, a count of fratricidal manslaughter to complement the patricide. Perhaps the guilt would drive him to psychotic break.

But, as vindictively satisfying as that scenario might have been, there was the small matter of it requiring Sherlock's death. And he was quite attached to being _alive_ , thank you. Even with the frequent downsides of that condition. Because no matter how incredibly shitty his life managed to be, it was still vastly preferable to oblivion. Misery was better than nothing.

No option then but to find a way to remain nameless, unseen. If hidden he could count himself safe. For a given value of the word, anyway.

Headed for the hall, Sherlock hesitated a moment before passing by the door frame. The Mexican was watching him with a dark, calculating expression. Planning something? Being tripped or otherwise molested would likely slow Sherlock down quite a lot in his current physical state. Find a way to avoid aggression. Needed to instill fear, respect. The bloke thought he was some sort of proxy agent for his boss, right? Probably wouldn't attack a holder of superior rank. Best keep that charade going, then.

 _"Informaré esto a Avila,"_ Sherlock intoned in a cold, dangerous voice. Or as cold and dangerous as one could get whilst trying to speak a language they weren't particularly fluent in. Hopefully the intended message of _I'll be reporting this to Avila_ had gotten through. He paused a microsecond, then decided going for full-blown melodrama couldn't hurt anything and added a few more layers to his current Siger impression before adding, _"Tratan de no hacerse más avergonzado."_

Hm. Alright, then, perhaps attempting a quintessential villainous sendoff of _'try not to embarrass yourselves further'_ hadn't been the best of ideas. Mostly because all he got in return was a confused, vaguely incredulous look. Like he'd just said something patently ridiculous. Sherlock grimaced slightly at his own linguistic ineptitude but managed to take advantage of the moment of bewilderment to step neatly over the man's legs. Out of range of being kicked, now. That was all that had really mattered anyway.

Right, so - plan of action. Shoes first, that would be most efficient way to go about things. Still on the front porch where he'd left them yesterday. No time to waste, get moving.

Hayley flashed him an excited grin as he strode quickly by her. For some reason she was still on the line with the authorities; trying to keep her talking so she'd not wander back into danger, Sherlock guessed. He faked a smile for her benefit as he made for the front entrance - no need to let her catch on to what he was doing, she'd only get upset, make things inconvenient.

It took only a second to duck out the door, grab his still-muddy trainers, and glance up to see the flashing lights of a police car not far down the road. A burst of panic shot through his chest as he darted back inside. Bloody hell, that was an _impressively_ quick response time compared to London. Must be a station or something nearby. Or was it just because a child had called? Either way it left him with a very narrow window of time in which to abscond.

Hayley's grin had shifted into a quizzical look as she tracked his progress back past her towards Joshua's room. He'd have liked to say something in parting to her _(though why he should have that impulse he had no idea - she was just some irritating little American girl, after all; shouldn't care, she'd forget him in a week)_ but that would take too long. Instead he gave her another really rather obviously fake smile, the insincerity of which she was hopefully much too young to spot, and disappeared from her line of sight.

Passport, wallet, assorted random odds and ends he'd had in his pockets... would be nice to get his jeans back but Mrs Hudson hadn't- ah, no! She had. They were folded at the end of the bed. Must have brought them in while he'd been asleep.

He grabbed the small stack of clothing and looked around rather frantically for a bag of some sort he might be able to nick on short notice. An old knapsack was shoved under the bed, still bearing Joshua's name in thick black marker on the handle alongside a crude drawing of a dog. Sherlock tossed everything into it, slung the thing over one shoulder and set about removing the insect guard from the window as quickly as possible.

He'd just barely managed to re-position the screen in its frame, having made a painfully uncomfortable exit through the window, when he heard the distinct sound of multiple squadcars pull into the driveway on the other side of the house. Fuck, fuck fuck, _leave_. Now. He was _not_ going back to England. Back to being watched every second of his life. Couldn't put himself within tempting reach of certain persons he'd sworn never to contact again, surrounded by the spectres of buried memories... no, no no no, failure simply wasn't an option.

Pounding of the policemens' boots on the porch. Sherlock scrambled to pull his shoes on, not bothering to tie them, and took off for the small copse of trees separating the Hudson's yard from their neighbours. Within seconds he'd vanished amongst the foliage.

Whilst up in the tree with Hayley an hour or so back he'd managed to make a fairly decent mental map of the surrounding landscape. The neighbourhood was a veritable warren, of course, but luckily not completely impenetrable. All he had to do was find the nearest main road, follow the pavement for a mile or so, take a few turns, and then it'd be a straight shot along the highway back to Tallahassee. Once there he could catch a long-distance bus and leave this whole miserable place behind him.

Listening closely for sounds of policemen searching for him - Hayley would've pitched a fit the moment she registered his absence - he risked wasting a half-second to tie his shoes, then took off at a brisk pace in search of a street that led towards the city.

Adrenaline had begun to drain from his veins, leaving him in significant pain, coming perilously close to dropping from exhaustion, but he set his jaw and soldiered on. _Been through worse_ , he reminded his brain sternly. Lived through broken bones and fractured ribs and a semi-accidental suicide attempt. He'd survive. Always survived.

Sherlock coughed into the crook of his elbow, grimaced, and with a free hand fished out his cigarettes. Nowhere near the energy boost of cocaine, of course, but they'd have to do. Wouldn't be able to rest until he was as far from here as he could get. Hours of walking just to get out of the residential area. And then who knew how long after that.

It was midday now, the sun heating stiflingly humid air up to unbearable levels. He shook his head and bit hard into the filter of his cig as he walked. Ignore it. _Ignore it._

Buoyed by a cloud of nicotine he forced himself onwards.

**««**


	7. Chapter 7

**««**

There had to be a point where the human body would simply fail.

It was like a machine, wasn't it? A transportation system for his brain. One comprised of brittle flesh and bone rather than solid metal. And if a contraption made of immutable iron could fail if not given sufficient fuel and upkeep, then it would stand to reason that one of flesh could as well. Logically it should fall to pieces that much more quickly, in fact, given its inherent fragility.

As things were, though, Sherlock had yet to drop dead. Which was surprising for a number of reasons. Considering everything he'd put himself through in the last... well, hell, actually now that he thought about it he'd not really had a respite from stress, injury, illness, or self-destruction since around the age of six. That was a bit depressing.

So what did that make, then? Fourteen solid years of reality doing its damnedest to destroy him? And yet he continued to stand. Or walk, in this case, which he was still managing to do despite wanting very much to fall flat on his face in the middle of the pavement and never move again.

Perhaps that would be inspiring in some other context. His indomitable will, or spirit, or whatever. But at the moment Sherlock was finding himself more than a little irritated by the whole business. Thanks to his own pig-headed stubbornness he couldn't quite bring himself to stop walking until such time as he was literally incapable of doing so. Anything short of passing out felt too much like giving up. Weak-willed, whingeing, just as unreliable as everyone had always claimed him to be. Can't keep on task, never commits to anything, never pays attention.

But he was _quite capable_ of paying attention, thank you. Of applying himself wholeheartedly to a single task. Did so often, in fact, and frequently with such an intensity as to be a detriment of his ability to acknowledge the world around him. One might even say he was uncommonly _good_ at focussing on small problems or details for extraordinary lengths of time. Better than most. A skill, perhaps.

The only problem with calling that a _skill_ , of course, was that he'd never been able to choose what he set his mind to. It was always something random and unpredictable. Insect facts or the origin of the Greek alphabet or walking miles through suffocating humidity for no real reason other than a vague dread for how viciously his own brain would reprimand him if he were to give in to the temptation to stop. Even though it was probably quite safe to do so, now. He'd gotten far enough away from the Hudson residence to avoid being implicated in any crimes there. Could probably just sit down in the shade for five minutes without much trouble.

But then, no, he wouldn't. Because there was a small suburban shopping complex not too far ahead and for whatever asinine reason he'd made that his goal. He wasn't capable of giving up on the task of reaching the closest corner shop unless it proved literally impossible.

Why couldn't he have trained this pinpoint perseverance in the face of multiple distractions on something useful? Like, say, his studies. Back in university. If he'd been able to just ignore the stupid cameras none of this would ever have happened. But school work had never been interesting enough - other things always butted in, demanding his attention. Solving stupid puzzles no one cared about, researching things like crime scene forensics even though he was a bloody _chemistry_ student and had no plans whatsoever of going into law enforcement.

A wave of dizzying fatigue sloshed through his brain and he wondered dazedly if perhaps _this_ was the final breath, the moment he'd pass out and not have to suffer through this hell any longer. But it wasn't. He forced himself to inhale another lungful of too-humid, disgustingly warm air and kept going. Always kept _bloody_ going. When the fuck would his system learn its lesson and just fail, already. Lord knew it'd had plenty of opportunities.

Could've just died peacefully at fourteen under a heavy veil of painkillers, but _no_ , he'd had to go and wake up. Fatal bloody overdose, and he'd still woken up. Forced, then, to spend Christmas morning feigning polite deference to the man who'd casually snapped his wrist two days prior. Fight back the urge to pass out or be sick over breakfast.

Of course he'd succeeded. Always did. Got back to his room in one piece, spent the next six hours drifting in and out of consciousness, woke up to find his arm wreathed in a haze of excruciating pain with absolutely no way to mitigate it save curling up in the corner and trying not to cry. That had been lovely. Happy Christmas.

Mycroft had phoned, then, a few hours before nightfall. Sherlock had very nearly ignored it. Shouldn't have answered, really. All he'd ended up with was a very one-sided conversation wherein Mycroft vaguely apologised for not coming home before launching into a boring discussion of what exactly he was doing that had kept him too busy to travel. And, yes, wonderful, Sherlock was very happy for him and his exciting new job. But he'd spent the whole phone call biting back the urge to interrupt. Tell his brother everything that had happened in the past three days and beg to be saved from the hell of his miserable existence.

In the end he'd said nothing, of course. Mycroft sounded too enthusiastic, too pleased with his own position and rising rank and grand accomplishments. Sherlock hadn't been able to bring himself to ruin his brother's good mood with his own stupid litany of problems. Not on Christmas.

Instead he'd faked his usual attitude, engaged in their normal banter, tried not to make himself sound bitter or upset or in pain. And in the back of his mind he hoped, as he always did, that Mycroft would pick up on some tiny clue, see past the facade and ask what was wrong. Surely he was capable? He was _Mycroft Holmes_ , for god's sake, he could deduce anything.

But Mycroft hadn't noticed. He never did. Sherlock was too bloody good at acting like he was fine. Mycroft hung up and didn't call again for nearly a month. Too busy, he'd said. Always was.

Sherlock shook his head and once more focussed on walking.

Five or ten or maybe twenty minutes later he half-stumbled into what looked like a small corner shop near a petrol station. Or a 'gas' station, according to the sign. Whatever. The clerk glanced up, loudly chewing a wad of gum, and gave him an extremely unimpressed once-over.

Reluctantly Sherlock straightened up from where he'd been doubled over against a shelf by the door, shot the girl behind the counter an imperious glare, and tried to retain some manner of dignity as he made his way back towards the refrigerated drinks section. Not that he really had any plans to buy anything (money was tight enough as it was without wasting any of it... though water might not go amiss) but the cool breeze from the AC vents back there looked heavenly.

He glanced over his shoulder to check that the shop girl didn't have a direct line of sight to his actions, and, seeing her occupied with a magazine, turned and opened the glass sliding door just far enough to grab two bottles of water and close it again. One of them he slipped inconspicuously into his knapsack - no reason to pay for something as basic as a bottle of water - and the other he opened and took a swig from before sinking down against the cool glass doors to just sit for a while. Sooner or later the shop girl would remember he'd come in and kick him out for loitering. He was perfectly content to wait around until that happened.

The jingling of the bells on the shop door caught his attention and he glanced up from where he'd been staring blankly at the floor tiles, but found he couldn't actually see anything past the shelf full of crisps in front of him. Eh, who cared anyway. Just another patron. Likely they'd wander back in search of a drink and spare an odd look for the dishevelled youth slouched against the freezer. Unless they tried to have him arrested he really couldn't care less.

Sure enough, footsteps approached along the tiles. Sherlock took another swig of water and resolved to ignore whomever it was. Set his thoughts instead to the long trek from here to Tallahassee. Perhaps he could catch a bus? Were there any routes running through this area? Had to be, it was a residential zone.

Deciding he'd just deal with that eventuality when he came to it, he let his head tilt back to rest against the cool glass behind him. Probably not a good idea to fall asleep whilst loitering in a shop he'd just stolen product from. So he wouldn't sleep, then, just… rest a bit. Close his eyes.

The next second he opened them again when he realised someone was standing over him.

Sherlock straightened his head back up, staring at the elderly gentleman who'd apparently come round the corner of the nearest shelf and was now looming above the pathetic heap that, for the moment, was Sherlock.

It was Harold Hudson.

After a tense few seconds the doctor finally spoke. "You're in the way, boy."

"Oh, erm… yes, sorry," Sherlock muttered. Reluctantly he hoisted himself to his feet, made to back away, but Harold halted the retreat with a firm grip on Sherlock's upper arm. Sherlock instantly froze. As much as he'd like to believe he'd firmly overwritten the habits and mannerisms of his childhood, being grabbed by a man both taller and older than him whilst he was already injured seemed to tap right into some deep seated instinct of self-preservation, making him lock up like a spooked deer.

Harold appeared to take note of this and raised a brow somewhat bemusedly.

"What, son, you think I'm going to hit you?"

"I… n-no," Sherlock replied, hating the way his voice stuttered a bit. He made a valiant effort to regain some measure of his usual poise. The state of his health was making that rather difficult, however, and he found himself painfully stifling a cough instead. Harold was still holding on to his upper arm.

Sherlock opened his mouth to object to this, attempting to tug his limb free for good measure, (he didn't quite manage - muscles still refused to function, stupid body convinced he was about to be badly hurt despite logical evidence to the contrary), but Harold cut over him.

"I'm going to buy what I came in here for, and then we're headed back to the car, where you and I are going to have a little chat about what went on at my house today. Understand?" he said in a low, no-nonsense tone. Sherlock tried very hard to look like he wasn't fighting off a creeping sense of terror.

"And if I refuse?" he retorted in what might have passed for a snippy tone were it not laced with a distinct note of alarm.

Harold just smirked. With a slight lift of his browline he shifted his overshirt, revealing the distinct bulk of a gun holster affixed to his belt.

"Then you'll get a bullet through your skull, kid, and I'll claim self-defence."

Alright, then. That… was a fairly convincing argument. Sherlock glanced elsewhere for a moment, weighing his options, but before he could come up with a suitable rebuttal Harold was already dragging him off by the arm. Struggling proved fruitless - as ever, Sherlock found his own lack of weight or appreciable muscle mass working against him. And of course it didn't help that any sudden movements involving his abdomen sent a white-hot stab of pain clear through his gut.

Harold plucked up a bag of ice from a nearby freezer with his free hand, hefted it onto his shoulder and walked the two of them to the front of the store to pay. The clerk gave them a brief, vaguely curious look but seemed to decide not to bother wondering about their odd arrangement.

Though on second thought, Sherlock realised, it probably wasn't odd at all - he knew full-well his body proportions hadn't quite filled out yet (doubtless his past year or so of unintentional self-starvation hadn't helped the process) and that he thus still looked like nothing so much as a gangly teenager. Harold, meanwhile, was a stern-faced older man in approximately the right age bracket to be either a parent or grandparent. Anyone who saw them would most likely assume a simple family dispute and not interfere. Wonderful. No reason for anyone to attempt to come to his aid.

Walking back out into the heat of the outdoors felt like being slammed in the face by a solid wall of scorching humidity. Harold didn't seem to take any notice, completely at ease as he not-quite-gently lead Sherlock on towards an unfamiliar vehicle.

"That's not the car Mrs Hudson was driving yesterday," Sherlock said for no real reason besides having thought it, which in his current predicament transferred almost immediately into speech. Mental processing power was diverted into survival strategies, not bothering with the brain-to-mouth filter. Harold just huffed a noise that might have been a laugh, or a scoff, it was difficult to tell.

This was a much larger vehicle than his wife's, some sort of modern looking pickup truck painted all in white. Sherlock was unceremoniously deposited in the back seat along with Harold's bag of ice.

The man climbed into the driver's seat and started up the engine, flashing an insincere, yet somehow disturbingly sociable, smile into the rearview mirror.

"Doing alright there, son? Look pretty worn-out."

Sherlock glared, unsettled by the sudden switch to amicability but unwilling to show it.

"I'm fine," he snapped, though in all fairness he very likely wasn't. Too many sharp stabs of pain all vying for his attention, the overall exhaustion of the heat (though the truck's AC was at least helping that), and a vague sort of mental weariness for the insanity of his life. Why on earth couldn't he just be a normal twenty-something who didn't continually find himself in life-or-death dramatic situations? Was that too much to ask of the universe?

Harold was now pulling the truck onto the highway, in the opposite direction to where Sherlock had been headed. Passing all the half-remembered landmarks he'd trudged by over the past few hours was a fairly nihilistic reminder of just how much misery he'd put himself through for absolutely no reason. He scowled out the window, then over to the man in the front seat.

"What, then, you're kidnapping me?"

Harold chuckled. "What? No, of course not. Just giving you a place to stay, that's all. Thought we'd take a trip down to the house near Steinhatchee. Lovely place, right down by the water."

"Are suspicious Mexican men going to try to blow that one up, too?" Sherlock asked snidely. Harold just smirked to himself.

"Straight to the point, eh, boy? Fine by me," he remarked in the same genial tone he'd been using since they entered the vehicle. He shot another smile towards Sherlock. "This is pretty simple, then - you tell me what happened at my house today, down to every last detail, and in return I won't hand you over to the cops."

A small bolt of alarm shot through his chest, brain inadvertently flashing through all the worst-case outcomes of that scenario, but Sherlock quickly smothered it. Instead he managed to scoff dismissively.

"Delivering me to the safe hands of law enforcement? Hardly much of a threat," he retorted, throwing in an unimpressed glare for good measure. Being turned in to the authorities would be _inconvenient_ , yes, but he was fairly confident he could find a way to escape. Deduce all the secrets of a few of the officers, pit them against each other if possible and make a break for it whilst the lot of them were disoriented. Wouldn't be difficult, he'd done similar before... though admittedly never with such stark consequences on the line. And, he had to remember, fucking around with American cops could very well get him killed. As could the current debacle, though, to be fair. Neither option was really shaping up to be the better one here.

Harold looked up and smiled again, the warm expression at odds with the sharp glint of pale eyes behind thin spectacles.

"Ah, well, maybe I wasn't so clear - specifically I'll give them this. _Then_ I'll turn you over." On the word 'this' the man flipped an item out of the chest pocket of his shirt, holding it up over his shoulder between two fingers so Sherlock could see. The sun's glare off the plastic shifted with the vehicle's movement, leaving Sherlock staring blankly at his own driving licence.

Instantly his hand shot towards his wallet - he'd checked to be sure he had everything before he left, surely!? But the motion halted mid-way as he realised it would be a pointless endeavour to look. The card was right there, after all, clearly in Harold's possession. Sherlock had to have overlooked something, somewhere... allowed the one piece of crucial identifying information he'd permitted himself to keep _(for stupid, sentimental reasons, damn it all)_ to fall into the hands of a stranger intent on blackmailing him. Forgot to double-check his belongings, blanked the entire necessity of doing so, even - always so bloody scatterbrained. He grit his teeth in a mixture of frustration and rage, trying and failing not to let either emotion show on his face.

Harold hummed lightly to himself and flipped the card back into his pocket.

"None too happy about that, I take it," he remarked casually, letting out a soft chuckle at the palpable fury Sherlock must have been exuding.

Before Sherlock could come up with a suitable scathing answer another blasted coughing fit rose up unbidden, and he was forced to duck his head to try and stifle it. The floor of the truck below his face was littered with bits of leaves and grass, a few brown stains, patches of sand and dirt. He fixed a vicious glare on the debris as if it could somehow be blamed for his life's numerous problems. And, hell, perhaps it could - messy floor of a truck seemed a perfect encapsulation of his general mental state, a disorganised debris field, completely unnavigable without a cushioning blanket of snow to smooth the jagged terrain. If he just had a bit of coke, christ... even just the barest layer of frost and this would all be so damned _easy_...

But _argh_ , no - _no_ , fuck's sake, don't think about that. That period of his life was done, over, finished. Had to learn how to pick through the scattered wastes of his head on his own, not just bury it all and forget the chaos existed. Don't take the easy route, lazy arse.

After what seemed an interminable silence Sherlock finally took as large a breath as he could manage without hurting himself, then leant back again to train an imperious scowl out the window, blurs of scenery zipping past. Pointedly he shifted to sit half curled up in his seat like a child and let his muddy trainers track dirt all over the upholstery. Well, then... best just go along with things. Cooperation was the least dangerous solution, for now.

"Two men, Mexican judging by their dialect, one thin and the other heavy-set," he started reluctantly. "The thin one spoke English, not well enough to notice I was foreign by my speech patterns, but held a fluent conversation. Heavy accent in both languages. They were posing as pest exterminators-"

Harold cut in with a snort, plainly unimpressed. "Didn't waste any time in the imagination department."

Sherlock shot the man an acid glare for interrupting him, but nonetheless continued. "It was an obvious ploy, yes." He huffed irritably and turned his attention to the window once more. "Hayley and I gained entry to the house by posing as neighbours, whereupon I spotted one of the men affixing a block of C4 to your armchair. This was rather alarming, as one might expect, so I quickly sequestered us in your office... and, er..." Sherlock trailed off, realising he was about to confirm himself as even more of a probable criminal than he already had, or a complete moron. Both, most likely.

He looked elsewhere and smothered a painful cough before continuing in what was definitely not an embarrassed mumble. "Er... I phoned Mrs Hudson."

"You called my wife first instead of the cops," Harold clarified, voice carrying the anticipated undercurrent of flat, disbelieving mockery. Sherlock scowled.

"It seemed logical at the time," he snapped defensively. In retrospect he had no idea why he'd made such a reckless decision - not when the more sensible choice had been so dead obvious. But, somehow, contacting the police hadn't even occurred to him in that moment. He couldn't remember so much as having had the notion to do so until later, when he'd been left with no other option. That was troubling in its own way, really, not having thought of something so basic... but, fuck, it wasn't exactly something he could afford to dwell on right now. Had to move on.

Up front Harold just shook his head, not disappointed so much as bemused. His false air of geniality had all but evaporated over the course of their conversation.

"Just get on with the rest of it, kid. We'll sort out what an idiot you are later."

Frowning, Sherlock nevertheless nodded. No real point in arguing that. He was of much the same opinion, after all. Turning to look out the window at the flashes of green amid the distortion of heat haze, he proceeded to explain, in as concise a manner as possible, how he'd disabled the intruders, spoken to (or attempted to, at least) one of them, and ultimately fled the scene.

Harold kept a brooding silence for a few moments afterwards. Finally he spoke, fingers tapping thoughtfully on the steering wheel.

"You know, if I were to take a stab in the dark here, I'd say you've got a pretty impressive array of skills for being some gap-year junkie off the streets." The man went briefly quiet in feigned contemplation, drawing out the tense static between them. "Almost like, oh I don't know... maybe there's a good reason you've been carrying around a fake passport, hm? Foreign, multi-lingual, fighting ability and a valid forged identity..." He smiled knowingly. "I'd just about wager someone's after you, boy."

He punctuated this with a meaningful glance through the rearview mirror, which Sherlock met but didn't respond to with more than a level stare. His personal history was none of this bastard's business, fuck off. He did his best to convey said sentiment through his expression, mostly succeeding judging by Harold's bemused snort.

Within a few seconds Harold broke the brief staring match to look back to the road. His expression shifted smoothly from vague amusement to an oddly pensive reverie.

"Let me tell you something, then, son," he spoke up after another long pause. "It never lasts. The snatches of security, thinking you're out of the fire, undetectable? Never for long. You'll keep on running til the day you die."

"Better to spend a lifetime running than lay down and surrender," Sherlock countered immediately, yet again without having really meant to. He scowled for the accidental response, about to be cross with himself, then quite abruptly found himself no longer giving a shit. Instead he just sighed a bit and let his head drop onto his knees, leant against the seat back beside him, all sense of rebellion melting away to be replaced with resigned weariness. Oh, fuck it, hardly mattered what he said at this point. Everything would go to hell in a handbasket soon enough. If it hadn't already.

Harold actually smirked for the line, though, humming in what sounded like amused agreement.

"Can't argue with that," he said, chuckling. "Don't let the bastards keep you down, huh?"

"You're one of them, you do realise that," Sherlock muttered irritably. Honestly, the man was in the process of abducting him to god-knew-where, for any number of nefarious purposes, and was holding massive blackmail over him to boot. If there was any clearer definition of a complete bastard he couldn't think of one.

"Hah. Ah, son, I've been one of them for a long, long time," Harold replied, his voice gone strangely calm, subdued. "Just part of life - you don't get anywhere being nice. Take what you need, give nothing back."

"You're a bloody _doctor_ ," Sherlock snapped, looking up with a glare. "How does that not constitute 'giving back'?"

Unsettlingly, Harold just smiled. His bearing remained utterly, unnaturally relaxed. As if he'd reached some internal decision and was now settling in to follow through with a simple, linear plan. In a casual gesture the man reached over and flipped on the radio - the warbling tones of some 50's classic settled in around them and Sherlock groaned for the injustice of it all. Injured, kidnapped, and forced to listen to awful mid-century American pop music, god.

Life, he thought, couldn't possibly get any worse.

**««**


	8. Chapter 8

**««**

"Is it bad form to ask one's kidnapper to stop for a smoke break?"

Harold glanced up from the road and quirked a brow at Sherlock, who'd over a sudden, extended period of stillness begun to seriously take notice of the amount of pain his body was in. Abdomen, jaw, knuckles, ribs... practically every part of him was either bruised or overworked or both. Plus he could feel the onset of a fever, that deep internal ache heralding a worsening infection. And on top of it all he was edging into tobacco withdrawal.

A fraction of this misery was in his power to mitigate, that being the acute lack of nicotine, but it seemed a rather poor idea to just light up a cig in someone's car. Especially whilst that someone was in the business of abducting you.

"It's only a two hour drive, son, think you'll make it."

Sherlock was well past the point of maintaining his usual imperious façade by now. Too many random sources of pain and discomfort throwing the whole concept of dignity out the window. In a fit of desperation he allowed himself to make an utterly pathetic face into the rear-view mirror. Everything hurt and his abdomen felt like a knife had got lodged in the muscle and all he wanted was a bloody cigarette. That didn't seem too much to ask. Have heart and take pity on the poor, downtrodden homeless boy.

Unfortunately Harold didn't seem in a compassionate mood. Instead he just snorted.

"I'm not about to let you run off into the wilderness, kid. I'm not that stupid."

Run off…? Sherlock frowned. He'd actually not considered that possibility. In retrospect an obvious plan... or it _would_ have been one, anyway, if he were capable of standing upright long enough to implement it. And if Harold didn't have a gun on his belt. And if the weather weren't fatally hot. And... what, alligators? Were there alligators this far north? No idea. Wasn't about to take his chances, though. Being eaten by a giant carnivorous reptile was not a fate Sherlock was willing to risk under any circumstances.

"I can't even sit up properly," he pointed out, making sure to add a note of pained desperation to his voice. "And you've got a gun besides. How am I supposed to escape without getting my brains blown out?"

Harold seemed to purse his lips in thought. Sherlock redoubled his efforts to look as pathetic as possible. That wasn't very difficult, unfortunately, as he'd not been bluffing about the whole _can't sit up_ situation – every attempt to straighten his abdomen came with a lance of stabbing fire.

"Didn't bother to wrap that abdominal contusion before you went off fighting Mexicans, I gather," Harold eventually remarked in an unimpressed monotone.

"Well I didn't exactly have a lot of lead time, did I?" Sherlock's attempt to be snippy lost rather a lot on the delivery thanks to the strain still in his voice. Alright, then, he really wasn't putting on an act at all now. This was problematic.

"It takes all of five goddamned minutes to-" Harold cut himself off with a sigh. After a quick glance in his wing mirror he slowed the truck to a stop by the side of the road. They were in some forsaken country highway, thick walls of vegetation all lit up in the verdant green of a tropical climate seeming to box them in on either side. Definitely not an environment Sherlock would have any chance in hell of surviving by himself.

The unexpected slam of a car door was startling, though not nearly as much as what followed next, which was the door next to Sherlock _opening_ and a well-built elderly American man yanking him out of the truck by his arm. This had about the effect one might expect. Sherlock yelped, both in pain and for a sudden wall of stifling heat outside the AC compartment, and managed perhaps half a second of standing before he collapsed face-first into the grass. Harold let him fall, evidently more interested in fetching something from his back seat than in keeping his erstwhile captive upright.

Thoroughly undignified, this. Sherlock's newfound posture crumpled up on the ground. Wasn't really capable of caring about it. Good _god_ if only he could just turn the whole fucking pain system _off_ – yes, thanks, brain, he'd hurt himself badly. Message received. Didn't need to be reminded of it on a constant, excruciating basis. Just the once would be fine.

A sharp, but not unduly harmful, bit of what felt like plastic bounced off his head, the sound of pills rattling within. He uncurled slightly to find Harold had tossed a prescription bottle at him. The man was now rifling through the rest of the contents of what looked like a well-stocked medical kit.

With a myopic squint Sherlock discovered that the label on the bottle proclaimed it to contain morphine sulphate.

"Martha quit taking 'em after we found a good indica strain," Harold explained distractedly. "Popped her hip out doing a pole dance years ago. Now she's got arthritis like you wouldn't believe." He turned back towards Sherlock for a moment, raising a brow. Tossed a roll of bandages lightly into the air and caught it again. "You know it's a bit funny, actually. Back when we were your age we figured all our injuries would just heal themselves and that was that. Never dreamed they'd catch up with us. Now it's all arthritis and muscle cramps, cursing that dumb kid from forty years ago for all the breaks he didn't bother to splint."

"If you're trying to suggest-" Sherlock cut off with a hiss of pain, trying and failing to shift into a less absurdly vulnerable position than curled up in the dirt. "- trying to suggest that I'm setting myself up for misery in later life, I'd point out that concerns about old age are entirely irrelevant to someone who shouldn't expect to see thirty. Did you intend for me to _take_ one of these?"

He rattled the pill bottle, glaring at it, and then up at Harold as if a good stare-down could tease forth the answer of why on earth a man would offer him painkillers in the midst of a kidnapping. Harold just took a step forward as he unwound a short length of his bandage roll.

"Unless you think a cigarette's going to help after what I'm about to do. Word of advice: it won't."

Well that was fucking ominous. Sherlock glanced between Harold and the pill bottle a few times, then in a split-second decision twisted the cap off and dry-swallowed a tablet before he could think better of it. Possibly he'd just poisoned himself like an idiot. Didn't care. Wasn't keen on playing the usual _remain stoic in the face of agony_ game for the next eternity, and if it really _was_ morphine... well, he'd be better off taking the risk, right?

Harold made a noise that might have been approval, or amusement, before grabbing Sherlock's arm and roughly hefting him upwards.

He didn't _quite_ black out. But the sudden, hellfire stab of pain when he was forced to stretch his injured muscle by sitting up was enough to grey his vision for a beat or two. Luckily Harold actually did seem to have the skill of a trained emergency physician – or at least it seemed that way to Sherlock, who admittedly wasn't in any state to keep track of time – and had a tight compression bandage secured before Sherlock could so much as fully regain his senses.

"There, now. Wasn't so hard, was it?" Harold's tone was one of derisive mockery. Sherlock made an odd sort of helpless noise in response and began to wilt forwards into the grass again. Whilst the bandaging may indeed have been helping to immobilise the area, which was good, it was also partially constricting his diaphragm, which was bad. Between the reduction in lung capacity, the suffocating heat of too-humid air, and a veritable symphony of lingering pain he was fairly sure he was going to pass out in a few seconds.

"What the hell's the matter _now?_ " Harold asked, exasperated. He bent down and dragged Sherlock to his feet, which he was only able to manage by virtue of being much taller and heavier-set than him, as Sherlock was nothing but dead weight at the moment. "Oh for- breathe from the _chest_ , you damn idiot. You've got intercostal muscles for a reason."

Ordinarily Sherlock might have chosen not to obey that order out of pointless rebellion. For now, though, he very much wanted to be able to breathe, and Harold's advice very much sounded like a reasonable solution, so he did his level best to try. Wasn't sure how well he was succeeding, but he didn't get much more of a chance to evaluate the situation before Harold all but hefted him bodily into the back seat of his truck and gave Sherlock only a second or two to move his legs before slamming the door shut.

The next several minutes existed in an odd space between awkward and tolerable. No further conversation, partially because Sherlock was too busy trying to figure out how to obtain adequate oxygen, and partially because Harold looked extremely irritated. He kept checking his watch.

For a moment Sherlock pondered over what that could mean – they'd stopped for ten minutes, tops. Probably much less. So why was he suddenly on such a tight schedule? Had he wasted more time than he anticipated? Couldn't have been related entirely to Sherlock, though. Perhaps something he'd been doing before discovering Sherlock in that corner shop had got him tied up longer than he'd have liked? Look around the cabin, then... streaks of mud on the carpeting, sand, some older stains, twigs and other debris. Something to do with dirt and the woods, probably. Burying a body? No, that was a bit dramatic. Burying something _else_ , though, maybe. Or digging something up.

Sort of pointless, mulling over this. Not like it made much difference to Sherlock if he knew why Harold had been mucking about in the dirt two hours ago. Wouldn't change his situation at all. Still, he didn't have much of anything better to do. Even the distraction of concentrating on breathing seemed to have faded away, possibly because there was no longer any discomfort from expanding and contracting old fractures on odd-healed ribs, which had been the reason he'd instinctively avoided breathing that way in the first place. Random pains from elsewhere were becoming little more than a whisper as well. As he sank down in his seat to sprawl half across the leather he realised fuzzily that the morphine must be kicking in.

Both drugs were opiates, so in theory it shouldn't have been much different to oxycodone. But where the painkillers he remembered taking years ago for bone fractures always seemed to leave him uncomfortable and anxious, this stuff was doing nothing of the sort. Just an odd sense of quiet sunlight permeating through the long-abandoned meadow in his head. Quite surprisingly serene.

And christ, but he hadn't seen this place in ages. His ridiculous little mindscape. Half-built tower there, he'd forgotten what it was meant for, and of course the willow tree. Leaves sparse, drooping branches seeming somehow limp and lifeless where once they'd been an elegant veil. Gloomy, discomfiting. But of course the gentle caress of warm sunlight more than made up for it. Grass overlying damp soil, occasional patch of mud where perhaps there might be a frog or two, everything well and in order.

Vaguely he remembered how all this used to be covered up in snow. Wondered how he could ever have thought that ideal, smothering everything under a uniform white. How boring. Sun was much better.

Harold had glanced over the seat at some point and seemed utterly exasperated by the sight of Sherlock flopped over on his back gazing blankly into space.

"How much do you weigh, kid?" the man asked as he turned back to the road. Sherlock blinked over at him.

"Hm...? Oh, er... I dunno?" He didn't, really. Why would he ever bother to weigh himself? Could maybe make a decent estimate, though, remembering the last time he'd known his weight, plus whatever other variables he knew his brain was factoring in but which he had no current capacity to identify nor care about.

"Erm... a bit less than nine stone, I think," he eventually decided. Somehow. Harold made an irritated noise.

" _Stone._ British lunatics. So what's that in English, then...?" He paused, apparently to do the maths in his head. "Around 120 pounds?"

"Probably?" Sherlock wasn't in any sort of mood to try the arithmetic to check that answer, and anyway wasn't quite sure what the point of this was. Who in hell cared about his weight, of all things?

"So I just gave thirty milligrams of immediate release morphine to a severely underweight adolescent with no opiate tolerance."

"I guess...?" Sherlock was still not entirely sure who cared or why, but Harold seemed some mixture of aggravated and concerned, which was interesting. He tilted his head slightly. "Why is that a problem, though? You wanted me dead anyway. No one would question an obvious junkie ODing on morphine tablets, they'd just write it off as self-inflicted. Perfect homicide." He paused, then frowned at himself. "Wait, why am I giving you advice on how to murder me?"

"Because you're stoned out of your mind, that's why," Harold supplied blandly. "And I don't want you dead, son. No sense getting rid of you if you might be useful. Have to figure out who exactly's after you, at least. See if they're willing to negotiate."

Sherlock huffed a laugh for some reason. What, extortion? Really? What kind of banal tactic was that?

"You're thinking you can use me as leverage?" He snickered and waved a hand towards the ceiling in a gesture whose meaning he'd forgotten in the millisecond since he started it. "I mean, you can, absolutely. No question. But it isn't going to help you at all. In fact you'd be far worse off for trying."

"And why's that, then?" Harold hedged. Thankfully Sherlock, out of it as he was beginning to feel, managed to retain some shred of self-preservation.

"If I answered that question then you'd not have much reason to keep me alive, would you?"

"I don't have much reason now, if you're saying you're no use."

"Ah, but you can't be sure I wasn't _lying_ about extorting the person you can extort by using me as leverage not helping you... or... that I even have any idea what I'm saying right now. Which considering the incoherency of that last sentence seems highly unlikely."

Rather than try to answer that mess of logic with any sort of verbal response Harold just sighed, not so much out of weariness but frustration, and once again checked his watch. Sherlock noted this with interest.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

Harold glared up at him through the rear-view mirror. "What?"

"Checking your watch. Are you late for something?"

Harold didn't reply. Just dropped his hand back to the steering wheel and continued driving. Evidently he'd made the decision to ignore anything else Sherlock said until he'd sobered up a bit. Rude. But then, eh... no, that was perfectly fine. Not a big issue. _Everything_ was perfectly fine, in fact. Nothing whatsoever hurt. For the first time in living memory he wasn't worried or scared or anxious about anything, and his head seemed to have filled with a haze of pleasant sunlight. Morphine, he decided, was _delightful_.

Some vague, far-away part of his mind was becoming rather cross over this. Off in a dark corner somewhere, lurking behind the chaos of everything, that intrepid spark of personal responsibility that always seemed to get smothered by the harsh grind of reality was now complaining that for _god's sake_ they'd _just_ managed to convince themselves to give up on the cocaine. That had been hard enough to justify, a struggle to ignore the pangs of longing. And now he'd gone and discovered this new drug with the power to temporarily erase the misery of existence? Fucking hell, that was going to be absolutely _impossible_ to resist using if he ever got hold of more. Which of course he would. Somewhere down the line he was going to get overwhelmed, like he always did, and just want the whole awful world to go away for a bit. And now instead of being forced to cope with things he'd know there was an easy escape just a tablet away. Fucking chemicals.

On the other hand, though, he really did feel _fantastic._ So maybe it wasn't all that bad.

These conflicting viewpoints were creating a bit of a scuffle in his head. Well, that wasn't relaxing at all. Maybe if he very firmly promised the angry voice that he wouldn't let himself get dependent on any more drugs, it might...? Ah, but, no. That didn't work at all. He'd just gone and made it angrier.

_Yes you will,_ the disembodied thought snapped. _Of course you will. No resolutions you make now are going to affect your future actions, they never do. This is going to become a massive problem eventually. And when it all blows up in our face like usual it'll be me who's forced to drag us out kicking and screaming because I'm the only part of this malfunctioning brain that seems at all concerned for life and dignity._

It occurred to him that this voice was beginning to sound a lot like Mycroft.

Accordingly, he chose to stop listening to it.

That turned out to be easy enough to accomplish. Because as the minutes dragged by, and the world got ever more hazy and disconnected, he found he'd begun to drift off. Possibly not a good idea to fall asleep _(again – honestly it seemed like he'd been sleeping near-constantly over the last few days)_ whilst being kidnapped... but he was very much drugged. And injured. And ill. Probably developing a fever. No realistic way he was going to be able to stay awake.

Harold might kill him in his sleep, granted, or he might stop breathing and die all on his own. There was no fear of that, though. Just blithe acceptance. It was fine. Dying was fine. Everything else was fine, too. He was taking a nap.

Waking up felt less like a return to consciousness and more like shifting into some sort of bizarre dream state. For one thing he was absolutely certain, now, that he did indeed have a fever. Felt that deep sort of not-quite-coherent ache that signalled one's brain was near to boiling. And for another he appeared to have magically teleported from the back seat of Harold's truck to a plush leather sofa.

Two sets of sensory information seemed to war with each other for a moment. Sofa, car seat, sofa again. He shook his head and decided he'd had just about enough of that. Brain was overheating, must be. Couldn't think straight. Best course of action would be to first get a solid idea of where he was, then work from there. Possibly find a cold compress as well.

Resolutely he took a deep breath and forced himself to sit up.

It was a leather sofa he was on now, apparently, not the car seat. Someone must have moved him. Around the room were walls lined with ornate bookshelves full of tomes on political theory, espionage, war, hemmed by a few expensive baubles. There was a large globe set off to the side of a hand-carved mahogany desk, spinning slowly. A faint scent of scotch hung in the air.

For several seconds he just stared blankly.

This was... home?

He was back home. The Holmes manor. Father's study, to be exact.

Feeling very lost Sherlock stood carefully from the sofa. Behind the great wooden desk was Father's familiar swivelling armchair, facing away from him. He frowned and walked towards it.

"Sir...?" he muttered quizzically. Not that he could really see any proof, but he knew by some sixth sense that someone was sitting in that chair. They should have turned round by now, right? Had to know he was there. With a slight glare – what, was the bastard ignoring him now? – he reached out over the desk and roughly shoved the seat sideways.

" _Excuse_ me, then. That was bloody rude."

Sherlock froze.

The man in the chair was in all respects exactly what he knew to be Siger Holmes. Bespoke suit, white shirt with an open collar for the informal setting of his home office, posture that particular deadly-casual comfortable lounge, usual imperious, mocking expression firmly in place. This was _absolutely_ his father. Had to be.

But... the proportions were wrong. Everything was off. Too thin at the waist, narrower shoulders, a more angular face. Hair too long, too dark... too... curly? Oh, christ, it wasn't Siger at all.

Sherlock was looking at himself.

"Well?" the doppelganger asked, raising a brow. The voice was a bit deeper than Sherlock knew his own to be... because this version of him was older, he realised. _Years_ older. Too many lines etched into his face, too deftly confident in his movements to represent Sherlock's current awkward state of fading adolescence. Had to be in his mid-thirties, at least. "Did you have something you wanted to say to me," the man continued. "Or were you planning to just stand there gawping like an idiot?"

The raised brow climbed further in expectant mockery – a sickening reflection of one of Father's usual expressions. Sherlock snatched his hand away from the chair as if burnt and stepped back. This wasn't... no, this wasn't right at all. Why would he grow up to be like _this_ , of all...

In a snap of anger he felt his stance abruptly shift. No, christ. He'd not calmly accept something this ridiculous. It must be some sort of prank.

"The fuck are you supposed to be?" He bared his teeth, clenched his fists at his sides. "A copy of _him_ with my face? That's just-"

"I am _not_ ," the older him said coldly, cutting him off, "A copy of _anyone_ , thank you. I am entirely my own person." He paused, seeming to reconsider. "Well... generally, anyway. At the moment I seem to be a figment of your delirious imagination. You are _incredibly_ stoned right now, by the way. Good job on that."

Sherlock was now distinctly nonplussed. He blinked, unsure how to parse the sudden shift from menacing to frivolous.

"I, er... took too much morphine, I think," he found himself muttering, purely from a lack of anything more relevant to say. "Harold didn't warn me about the dose."

"Yes, I know. I was there." Rolling his eyes, the strange being masquerading as an older Sherlock leant back into his seat as if bored. He lightly swivelled the chair side to side as his gaze flicked idly over Sherlock's attire. "You look like a homeless person."

"Well, I'm... fairly sure I am one, so." Sherlock blinked again, then scowled. No, hang on. Still angry. Siger with his face, absolutely unacceptable. But then it was difficult to maintain that sense of outrage whilst he was also very confused. Some sort of movement caught his attention and before he could think further on the matter he glanced around the room instead. Things were changing. The books on the shelf were now about chemistry and forensics instead of warfare, and the coat of arms over the mantelpiece had morphed into a glass-fronted case of pinned bat specimens. The faint whiff of scotch became tea.

Older Sherlock scoffed. "Oh, please. No you aren't. You've an entire _city_ to call home. Perhaps you might have have realised that before you left if you'd not been such a pathetic coward."

"Get fucked," Sherlock snapped, shifting his attention back with a savage glare. Call him a fucking _coward_ , the bloody-

The other Sherlock just smiled at him like one might a barking puppy. "Eloquent rebuttal."

With what seemed a long-suffering sigh he made the chair swivel sideways once more before bringing it to a stop. Leaning his elbows on the polished mahogany he let his chin rest pillowed atop clasped hands. "Let's have a look at the facts, then, shall we? The primary excuse you gave yourself for leaving home was to evade Mycroft, was it not? Except that reasoning is, of course, completely moronic – it would have been much easier to slip detection by taking a fake name and disappearing into the countryside. International travel was by far the riskiest path you could have chosen. You did it anyway."

"What're you-" Sherlock started, but his counterpart raised a hand for silence.

"We can deduce, therefore, that you're not _actually_ trying to get away from Mycroft at all. Nothing you've done so far indicates a desire to even try. I mean for god's sake you've not so much as bothered to forge a new travel visa. How exactly were you planning to leave the country without getting caught on the expired one, hm?"

"I..." Sherlock trailed off, confused by the rapid monologue. "I'll figure something out, I guess. I don't know."

Older Sherlock snorted in derisive amusement. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. No you won't. You're going to let yourself be detained and deported back to the UK, because it'll be the only way to get home without having to admit how much you've missed England." The man leant back in his chair with bored sigh, as if this were all very tedious. He put his legs up on the desktop and folded his hands casually over his stomach. "But then none of that's important, really. The main thing to note is that if your actual goal was to avoid Mycroft you'd have been much more clever about it. Nor is any of this an effort to get away from the drugs, either, because you've mostly been sticking to major cities with well-established distribution rings, and have broken that pattern only to travel to _Florida_ , of all places. You are aware proximity to Cuba renders cocaine almost laughably easy to obtain in that region?"

Sherlock didn't respond. Didn't really know _how_ , to be honest. Instead he stared at his unwelcome companion, partly annoyed, partly wary. Perhaps a faint twinge of anger left over. Didn't particularly want to know where this whole monologue was headed. Knew he'd not be able to escape hearing the rest of it.

"The most logical conclusion, then," Older Him finished in a grand, decisive tone. "Is that you've been fleeing something else entirely."

Semi-translucent images seemed to flicker to life all around them. A titration setup suddenly covered the desk, flasks of chemicals lined up neatly by a stir plate. A violin was propped up on the mantle. Dead frog pinned to a dissection tray, a stray cat eyeing him for scraps... and there, just behind the chair, stood the faint ghost of a person.

Something very heavy seemed to lodge in Sherlock's chest. He found himself staring wordlessly into warm brown eyes and a smile on a friendly, freckled face.

Older Sherlock's condescending smirk had dropped into a more solemn expression. He allowed his chair to swivel gently side to side as he observed whatever mortifyingly candid emotions must have been warring for control of his younger self's face.

Nearly a full minute passed between them in silence.

Finally he spoke again.

"You've been running from everything that makes you who you are."

That... it wasn't...

Sherlock took a step back, shook his head, grimacing. Tried to ignore the choking near-sob of a noise he'd just made. He _wasn't_... it was... he hadn't... it didn't _matter_... he'd _chosen_ to... to...

His older self huffed a quiet breath halfway between amusement and melancholy.

"Nothing ever really changes," he put in after a long pause, perhaps giving Sherlock a chance to regain some composure. "Human nature least of all. You'd do well to accept that sooner rather than later."

Unable to talk for fear of looking like even more of a pathetic child than he already did, Sherlock looked up with a furious, half-desperate glare. Fucking... who was _he_ to show up and act like some sort of, the fucking... bastard... damn it he'd almost made the choking noise again. Stop stop _stopstopstop..._

"Oh and, also." Older Sherlock smirked, waved a hand in gesture to the room around them, which was beginning to blur at the edges. "This has all been patently insane. Never combine that much morphine with a fever again."

Sherlock had no way to respond. All he could do was watch as the entire world seemed to fade out to static.

And then he jolted awake. This time on a bed. With a stuccoed white ceiling and the scent of an unfamiliar house.

Instinctively, perhaps trying to escape the lingering wisps of what may have been the strangest, most distressing dream he'd ever had in his life, or perhaps just to help get blood back to his limbs, he made to sit up. Only got most of the way there before he was stopped short by a sharp tug on his right arm. Baffled, he glanced down.

Silver links of a narrow chain had been fastened around his wrist with a small padlock. Some sort of makeshift restraint? Why? Wait, hang on... where the hell was he, even? Hadn't he been...? Ah, damn... the morphine. He must have passed out. In a kidnapper's vehicle. Whilst half-dead of overdose. Brilliant, Sherlock, fantastic survival skills. And then to wake up chained to a _bed_ , of all-

But then, no. Surely not. This couldn't be as cartoonishly literal as it seemed. Just a scare tactic, had to be. No one would _actually..._

With a faint sense of dread he yanked the chain taut. It held fast below the bed frame.

He was trapped.

**««**


	9. Chapter 9

**««**

Sherlock definitely didn't panic. Not at all.

He _may_ have spent a minute or so flailing against the chain in a frantic attempt to free himself, feeling a sharp spike of adrenaline slice through the lingering haze of feverish morphine like a hot knife. That might very well have happened. And he _might_ have damned near dislocated his own wrist with the sheer force of tugging against the manacle. But one didn't have to call that _panic._ Just… a bit of an overreaction.

Thing was, Sherlock really hadn't ever done well with being restrained. There were many reasons for this, and most all of them had to do with having been held down or locked up or otherwise confined dozens of times over the course of his life by people who invariably proceeded to kick the shit out of him. Maintaining an avenue of escape had thus become something of a psychological necessity. Absolutely _always_ needed to know he could get away if he needed to, no capacity to tolerate imprisonment.

And at the moment, he was very much imprisoned. Which was very, _very_ much not okay. Not not not _not not NOT_ okay at all jesus get it off get it off _getitoff_ yes alright he was perhaps panicking quite badly now. If he'd had the ability to bite his own hand off he might very well have done it. He was devolving into the instinct-driven mentality of a fox with its leg in a trap.

At the very least he was still physically exhausted, which limited the amount of damage he was able to do to himself. Within a few minutes he was too tired to really do much of anything beyond curl up on his side and stare balefully at the little padlock keeping him prisoner. Could pick that. Easily. But he'd not been able to find anything of use within reach. Supposed he could attempt to prise loose a length of wire from the box spring, at a stretch, but just the thought of expending that much energy on a plan that might not even work at all was soul-crushing. Couldn't afford to waste the effort. Too drained of motivation to even try.

If one were going with the trapped fox analogy he supposed he must have now transitioned to the phase where the animal goes stock-still and growls at anything coming near. He'd seen this happen once or twice back home, in the course of the groundskeeper's personal unending war on all carnivorous wildlife. Even tried to free one of the foxes, once, but of course all that got him was a painful bite and a scolding from the nanny. Always seemed so cruel, though. The proud, sleek animals reduced to quivering lumps of fur, hiding their terror behind bared teeth and a snarl. He'd hated seeing the traps out, made a point of disabling any he came across.

And now here he was absolutely vindicated in his childhood actions, because this was awful.

Some indeterminable length of time passed, wherein Sherlock did nothing but glare at the padlock and wallow in his misery. It had come to his attention at some point during all this that he was again shirtless. Which, to be fair, did make sense as his shirt had been rendered filthy by a combination of sweat, humidity, bark, grass, and dirt stains. Probably been taken for washing. Or removed out of convenience, as when he shifted his glare briefly from the padlock to his own body he realised the bandaging around his midsection had been re-wrapped. Less haphazard than before, done in neat overlapping rows.

There was also a new sticking plaster affixed to the underside of his left arm. Being intimately familiar with his own venous configuration he recognised the placement as having most likely been an injection into the cephalic vein. Fabulous. So he'd been drugged again. That meant he had no way whatsoever of knowing how long he'd been out.

As he was contemplating just how willing he'd actually be to dislocate his own thumb in an effort to slip the chain off his hand, he heard the sound of a door opening, and looked up to see a smiling Mrs Hudson bustle into the room with a serving tray.

"Oh! Dear, you're awake! How lovely." She beamed and, setting down her tray on a nearby chest of drawers, walked over to touch the back of her hand briefly to his forehead. Sherlock glared venomously up at her. "Seems that fever's gone down, then. Lucky thing Harold had some medicine on hand for that. Ibuprofen, I think... oh my, is something the matter?"

She appeared to have finally noticed the acid glare fixed on her. Rather than be at all perturbed she simply turned back round to fetch something off her tray, which appeared to hold a teapot, cup, plate with food, a glass of water and what looked like a cold compress.

Sherlock kept silent. Shouldn't have to explain what he was furious about, god's sake. She could see plain as day he'd been chained to the bloody bedframe, surely she'd not failed to notice such an obvious...

"Well, if you're not in the mood to talk that's alright," she said pleasantly. Without asking permission she pressed the cold pack to his stomach, making him jump. "Hold that there, then, else it does no good. Harold says there'll be permanent damage if the swelling's not addressed."

"What does he care?" Sherlock snapped. Forgotten he wasn't going to speak, as always. Why did he ever even bother trying that tactic?

Mrs Hudson seemed mildly affronted. Though of course with her kindly demeanour that translated into nothing more than a disapproving frown.

"Well, now. He is a doctor, you know. Taken an oath and all that."

"He's also _chained me to a bed_ ," Sherlock growled. He brandished his wrist to punctuate this, displaying both the chain and the somewhat impressive ring of bruising he'd given himself trying to get it off.

Mrs Hudson looked completely unperturbed. "Just a precaution, dear. Nothing to worry about."

"No, I'm fairly sure it's a _lot_ to worry about. One doesn't generally find themselves taken hostage by iniquitous elderly people without good cause for worry."

Jarringly, Mrs Hudson just laughed pleasantly. "Hostage? Oh, now, don't be so dramatic! No, no, Frank just wanted to be sure you didn't go wandering about the house off your face on morphine, that's all. I'll admit the chain's a bit much but it's all we really had to-"

Sherlock frowned. "Who's Frank?" he asked, cutting her off.

"Oh, er..." Mrs Hudson looked slightly flustered. She patted down her skirt and made to stand, behaving like she'd just realised she needed to be somewhere. "I'm sorry, dear, I've got to go take care of a little something. Just remembered. There's supper on the tray, there, though. Help yourself!"

And with that she hurried off.

Sherlock glared, confused. Wait, so did that mean there was another player to the whole mess? Some man he'd not met yet? But one who evidently saw enough value in his (relative) safety to allow Harold to continue to treat him. Was this the new bloke's house, then, maybe? Ah, but no, hadn't Harold said... or perhaps he'd _not_ said he owned it, just that they were going there... bloody hell this was bewildering. Ugh, forget it, just don't bother. Didn't matter anyway unless it helped him escape. And, speaking of, food actually sounded like a fantastic idea. Regain some strength, stop feeling so muzzy-headed.

Ah, but... alright, then. Looking for the tray, he realised Mrs Hudson had left it on a chest of drawers over by the door, which was a good two or three metres away. His tethered range was perhaps a foot and a half. The woman had _(inadvertently, one hoped)_ left him to starve with a meal just out of reach.

Rather than waste energy having any strong opinion on this state of affairs Sherlock simply huffed a small, irritable sigh. Well, whatever, that was fine. Not like he wasn't used to the world finding new and inventive ways to torment him. He returned instead to the business of figuring a way to get free and resolved to put the thought of sustenance out of his mind.

Unfortunately the brief expectation of food seemed to have reminded his body he was (at this point in time likely quite literally) starving, which combined with a distinct lack of appetite-suppressing chemicals in his system meant he now had to contend with the utterly foreign sensation of being hungry.

And that just wasn't fair in the slightest – he could deal with pain or illness or exhaustion or fear, that was all fine. He'd spent the vast majority of his life existing in one or more of those states on a daily basis. _Hunger_ , though, he rarely had to bother with. Even back before he'd started smoking cigarettes his instinct to consume food just hadn't ever been very strong. Possibly a trait borne of the combination of his being eminently distractible (to the point of often literally forgetting that eating was necessary) and of the off-putting nature of most edible substances he encountered. Everything always tasted horrible to him, or the texture was intolerable, or it was the wrong temperature, or he'd start contemplating the manufacturing process and thereby disgust himself to the point of being ill. Finding a dish he could eat without having to force himself was a frustrating and often futile endeavour.

Now, though, Sherlock was feeling something akin to what he supposed Mycroft might feel all the time, namely the instinctual drive to find and consume nutrients at all costs, taste or texture be damned. An extremely unpleasant sensation. Not painful in the way that a wound was but intolerable all the same. Especially for someone with so little practise ignoring it. Frowning, he considered making an attempt to stand. Would he even be able to, with the negligible length of his tether? Possibly. But then again quite possibly not. And even if he could, would he be able to reach far enough to grab the tray, with his physical health in such a state? Ugh... maybe. At a long shot.

But, then, that plan carried with it the same defeating sense of pointlessness that the whole 'prising a spring from the mattress' idea had, namely that he didn't want to waste the energy on something with there being even a slight chance of it not working out. This lack of motivation left him with very few options to try. No solid, workable plan beyond lying around in wretched helplessness.

After a brief minute or so spent wallowing in a cloud of self-pity Sherlock finally hit upon something resembling a clever idea, and busied himself for a bit tearing off a few strips of the bandage around his midsection. Winding them together for strength, he'd soon fashioned a passable little rope. This he then threaded through a link of chain and used as leverage to prise the thing apart. Just a tiny gap would do – enough to slip the next link. Easy... right? Theoretically, anyway. _Oh please just work, for god's sake._

It was difficult, but he thought he might be making progress. And even if not he at least wasn't thinking about food. Small enough mercies.

A shuffling noise from somewhere above him caught his attention, and Sherlock looked up from his (likely pointless) efforts to see a fine dusting of plaster drifting down from the ceiling near what looked like a door for attic access. Seconds later a face appeared in the gap between the panel and the ceiling. Freckles were the first thing that stood out in Sherlock's view, and for a heart-stopping minute he thought he'd dropped back into some sort of fever dream. Hallucinating _him_ in the bloody _ceiling_? Oh christ he'd done it, he'd gone and lost his damned mind...

With a stab of emotion that was one part relief and one part sheer confusion, though, his brain finally deigned to register the rest of the facial features. Red hair and green eyes and skin far too pale. Not him at all. No one Sherlock had ever met in his life, in fact. Which was a bit of a hollow comfort as it now meant there was a strange ginger man watching him from the ceiling.

Their eyes had locked, and the other's expression mirrored what Sherlock figured must have been on his own face, which was a look of nonplussed bewilderment. Then the boy frowned, however, and disappeared. A few thumping noises later he'd dropped down to the floor off some sort of folding ladder.

"God damn, seriously? He's taking hostages now?" American accent, young, perhaps Sherlock's age. And... he looked strangely familiar. Sherlock furrowed his brows, trying to place where he knew the facial features from, and responded on autopilot.

"... do I know you?" Possibly an odd question to receive from someone chained to a bed looking beaten and half-dead, but it was at point the most pressing matter in Sherlock's brain, and with his usual lack of a speech filter this translated into the first thing out of his mouth.

The other boy gave him a bemused tilt of his head. "Um... pretty sure no? I mean I guess we could have met somewhere before but I don't-" He cut himself off, looking slightly frustrated, and huffed an impatient sigh. "Okay no wait, that's not important. Did you get, like, kidnapped? Is someone gonna come looking for you? Cause I won't lie that would actually be really convenient."

"Someone's _been_ looking for me for quite a while, but he won't be coming here any time soon." It was a bit awkward to be speaking to someone looming over you like some sort of overdramatic half-lit movie scene, but Sherlock couldn't exactly stand up or anything. He settled for shoving his upper body upright, at least, sitting criss-cross with his back against the headboard, and tried to look like he was doing so by choice and not because he was currently chained to a post like a dog.

Meanwhile, his erstwhile companion's face had gone a bit alarmed. "Whoa, hey- is that your normal accent or are you, like, concussed?"

Sherlock shot him a withering glare. "I don't know, is that _your_ normal accent or are you trying to sound like a moron?"

The other boy's expression was oddly difficult to parse. Some mix of confusion and wariness and in large part disbelief.

"How the hell did my uncle manage to kidnap a British guy?"

"Your uncle?" Sherlock repeated, and upon doing so the pieces of the puzzle clicked suddenly into place. Oh bloody hell so _that_ was where he remembered his face from. "Oh! You're Joshua!" He exclaimed with the usual burst of excitement for having figured something out. And then immediately became confused, because... "Wait, you're dead. Harold killed you."

"Uh, did he? Wow, um... okay, cool. Spooky ghost, I guess." Josh blinked, then half-glared at him. "How do you know who I am?"

Sherlock glared slightly in return but answered anyway. "Mrs Hudson let me stay in your room for a night in Tallahassee. Hayley was quite enamoured with you, as well, so I got an earful of that."

"You know Hayley?" Joshua seemed genuinely surprised, then a bit regretful. "Aw, geez, is she okay?"

"She's worried that you hate her or something because you'd moved to Mississippi without a proper goodbye. Otherwise fine, I suppose." Sherlock waved a hand dismissively. For want of anything else to do with himself he returned attention to trying to prise the chain apart, because if he was going to sit here talking he may as well also be doing something useful. Or at least something that _felt_ useful.

"Mississi...? Um... you mean Michigan? Cause I was supposed to be going there for college."

"Yeah, that one. Same thing," Sherlock snapped impatiently. Ugh, the bloody weld on this chain was some sort of diamond-strength armour job.

"That's... they're not, at all." Josh seemed to shake himself, and quirked a quizzical look down at Sherlock. He seemed to have finally taken real notice of the chain. "What kinda lock is that?"

"A regular Master pin-tumbler. Find me a sturdy length of wire and I can-"

Sherlock cut off as Josh dug into his jeans pocket and produced a worn, but serviceable, tension wrench, along with a half-diamond pick.

"Okay so if I bust you outta that thing you're not gonna, like, strangle me or anything, right?"

"On my honour as an Englishman." Too impatient to even be intrigued by Josh's apparent knowledge of less-than-reputable skills, Sherlock brandished his wrist. For god's sake get the bloody thing _off_ already, he'd about lost all feeling in his hand.

Josh proved to be a passably competent lockpick, though of course on so simple a lock it would have been difficult not to be, and within a few seconds the bolt popped free. Sherlock wasted no time getting the thing the hell off and away from him, then scooted off the bed and several feet further besides, as if the lock could somehow re-trap him if he stayed near it. He rubbed gingerly at his now-throbbing wrist and fixed the chain with a feral glare.

Josh watched this in some bemusement, then tilted his head towards the door for a moment. "So... my aunty's here, right? Thought I heard her talking in this room."

At the mention of Mrs Hudson Sherlock recalled what she'd been in here for, namely feeding him, and took advantage of his newfound freedom by retrieving the sandwich off the woman's abandoned serving tray. Didn't even care what kind of meat it was, just that it was food... although, then, upon biting into it he realised it was tuna, the taste and smell of which he'd always found nauseating, so that made for a rather torn opinion on the matter.

Swallowing _(with a grimace – ugh, revolting)_ so as not to be talking with his mouth full, Sherlock leant his back on the chest to face his current companion and waved a hand in vague confirmation. "Yes, she's here. Left the room about..." He trailed off as he realised he'd somehow blanked out the entirety of his interaction with the woman. All he could conclusively remember was that he'd spoken to her, but not what about nor how long ago. The fine details had been reduced to static. "... oh... I guess... I don't know. I've deleted it."

"Deleted what?" Josh asked, confused. Sherlock took another bite of his unappetizing yet wholly irresistible sandwich and shrugged with a slight wince of what may have been self-recrimination. Should have been used to his brain doing this to him by now, really, but it still made him feel like a feeble-minded moron every time it happened.

"Er... when she was here last. I've forgotten what happened," he admitted, then glanced around the room, quickly scanning for clues. At the very least he was lucky to be clever enough to compensate for any gaps in his memory by deducing missing information. Small blessings. Ah, there, the cold pack – not quite all the way melted. Factor in his body heat, how long ice should usually take to melt, and... "She must have been here around twenty minutes ago. Left suddenly, judging by this tray being over here rather than beside the bed, so either I said something rude or she had something important to attend to. Possibly both. I'd guess she'll be back within half an hour to replace the cold pack."

"Should I ask why you forgot a thing that happened twenty minutes ago?" Josh looked slightly concerned, like he thought perhaps Sherlock might have suffered a concussion or other mental trauma. Sherlock just glared at his sandwich and forced himself to eat more of it before answering with a question of his own.

"I'm going to assume by your lack of concern for keeping a lookout that Harold's left the premises?"

Josh tilted his head a bit, plainly still suspicious of some sort of brain injury, but nodded. "Wouldn't've come out if he wasn't gone. Don't want him to know I've been squatting here. And I mean I guess he killed me or whatever, according to you, so that'd be a double-bad idea." A thought suddenly seemed to occur to him. "Hey... you know I don't actually know who the hell you are."

"Join the club," Sherlock replied cynically. No need to go introducing himself to even more people who might seize upon his name as blackmail material. Plus it wasn't as if anyone was going to need to be able to refer to him by name much longer anyway – he'd finished eating _(in record time, having wanted the abhorrent fish-taste part over and done with as soon as possible)_ and now had no other goal besides escape. Get away from all this nonsense and stay the hell out of the American South all the rest of his days.

Of course, on second thought... leaving meant he'd never know what in blazes was going on here. Who exactly Harold was and why Mexicans wanted to blow up his house and why Joshua was hiding in the attic of his relatives' summer home instead of being either dead or in Montana. He glanced over at Josh and eyed him critically. How much information would the boy have, then? And would asking him get Sherlock anywhere or would he just have to suck up his curiosity and leave without answers? Could... could he even _physically_ do that? Well yes, clearly... could just leave. Didn't have a compulsion to solve any puzzle he happened to stumble upon, that would be absurd.

And yet... "How much do you know?"

"What, in general?" Josh stepped over to the bed Sherlock had been trapped on, picking up a bundle that turned out to be Sherlock's identifying paperwork. (Sans authentic driving license, one assumed.) He flipped through Sherlock's fake passport and answered his question with clear sarcasm. "I dunno, about the same as anyone with a public education, I guess. Kinda wonder about Florida's school system sometimes, though, so..."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Yes, very clever." Josh smirked blandly at him, so Sherlock tried again. More direct this time. "Why do a load of Mexicans want your aunt and uncle dead?"

There was a bit of a spark of intrigue in Josh's eye as he looked back up, an odd half-smile making it clear he was quite further embroiled in this than he might have let on with his facetious attitude. He opened Sherlock's passport to the visa stamps and held it up slightly for inspection.

"Why've you been to so many different countries in the past three months?"

"I love to travel," Sherlock retorted in a tone of withering scorn. Josh seemed to get the hint – namely that the topic was not, and would never be, any of his business – and closed Sherlock's passport to instead study the gold relief on the front. He then huffed a slight sigh and tapped the little booklet against his hand a few times in thought.

"Okay, hey, look – I dunno who you are, or what you're doing here, or what my uncle's thinking keeping you all prisoner or whatever. For all I know you might be in cahoots with him. So if you want my trust you're gonna have to do something to earn it first, right? Then I might tell you stuff."

"And how do you propose I earn said trust?" Sherlock hedged. Josh smiled at him.

"Wanna help me find a computer?"

Sherlock blinked. That was... an odd request. Also one he had no way of fulfilling. "I have no idea where one might be."

"Neither do I, that's the problem. I have some shit I need to print out, but..." He stopped, hummed a thoughtful noise to himself, and gestured to Sherlock's arm by nodding his chin that direction. "Look, not for nothing, but I'm pretty sure you're some kinda low-life junkie."

"Thank you for the assessment," Sherlock replied drily. Josh just shrugged.

"Hey, that's a compliment right now. I mean if I'm looking for someone to help me break into a house I'm not gonna go for the preppy asshole with a popped collar, am I? I'd want someone who looks like you – someone who obviously knows what he's doing."

"You're assuming I'm some sort of career criminal based solely on the fact that I've got track marks," Sherlock snapped, justifiably offended. That was just bloody _profiling_ , christ.

"Am I wrong?" Josh asked blandly.

After a long, pregnant pause Sherlock was forced to grit his teeth and bite out an annoyed sigh.

"I'll need to find a shirt first before I do anything," he grumbled. Josh made a small _pfft_ noise that was half amusement, half incredulity, and quickly undid the scant two or three buttons done up on the light overshirt he was wearing. He had a t-shirt with some band logo on underneath, in roughly the same blue-and-white colour scheme as the plaid buttonup he now tossed in Sherlock's direction.

"Back door's right out down the hall there, let me make sure Aunty's not headed this way first. Don't wanna freak her out."

Josh walked over and carefully opened the door, evidently knowing how to do so near-silently, and peeked out into the hall. Sherlock took the opportunity to button up his newly-acquired shirt and collect his passport plus other belongings. His cigarettes and lighter were among these, and he breathed a short huff of relief for that. Second they got outside he was going to chain-smoke the whole rest of the bloody pack.

"Coast's clear," Josh announced quietly. He smirked back at Sherlock. "Keep it silent, right? Just a couple'a spooky ghosts."

"You're the ghost, not me," Sherlock grumbled. Wasn't the one meant to have been murdered, here.

But Josh just made a short noise of amusement. "Yeah? You sure about that?"

Without waiting for an answer Josh slipped out into the hall, jogged a short distance to a door at the end, staying well clear of the decorative shelves or photos on the walls. And behind him Sherlock frowned, because it struck him that in truth he wasn't sure about that at all.

How would he know, really, if he were dead? What if he only _thought_ his brother had saved him that day, chosen his life over Siger's, because it was the less painful scenario? Perhaps Mycroft had in reality done the sensible thing and shot Sherlock square between the eyes? Everything since then had felt so static and disjointed, after all. He'd thought that a symptom of the cocaine withdrawal, stress... but what if instead his entire current existence was just a series of synaptic misfirings as his brain tried in vain to repair its obliterated neural pathways? Shutting down around the violent destruction of a bullet? It would all make an alarming amount of sense...

This sudden new theory was disturbing enough to have wrenched his attention entirely away from the situation at hand, which as usual he only discovered upon blinking. He realised he'd stopped dead in the middle of the hall like an idiot. Josh was hissing at him to hurry up from the screen door ahead. Behind them the hall had begun to echo with the sound of footsteps.

Sherlock bolted a second too late.

**««**


End file.
